Losing a few pounds or keeping in shape by pedaling on an exercise bike is pretty boring, but it becomes a fun activity if virtual reality is involved
It all stems from the boredom of working out on an exercise bike, indoors in the living room. During one of those interminable workouts, Ramuel Maramara has a sort of enlightenment: why not use virtual reality to make things more interesting?
That's how ChessFit Trainer was born, more or less, a bicycle support (a roller, we would say in technical jargon) capable of transforming your mountain bike or road bike into the "smartest exercise bike in the world". The support synchronizes with your smartphone and allows you to adjust both the effort and to "leave" the room in which you are traveling in the world thanks to a virtual reality viewer. As if that were not enough, ChessFit Trainer allows you to convert the energy produced by pedaling into electricity, store it in an external battery and use it when you need it to recharge smartphones, tablets and even laptops.
Around the world by bike with virtual reality
Chess Trainer, as mentioned, is a support to use your bike at home. It also comes with a pair of headsets, a VR visor mount, and a pack of immersive 360-degree panoramic bike ride movies to virtually roam around cities like New York, London or Tokyo, or more naturalistic outdoor (virtual) locations. Without the need for a passport. There is of course a special application for iOS and Android to configure the type of workout, the advice of a personal trainer and obviously keep track of the activity done and the progress made.
(taken from Vimeo)
Recharge smartphones and tablets with the bike
By pedaling, in addition to burning excess calories - from 500 to 1,200 calories per hour - kinetic energy is generated that goes to charge a portable removable battery. Spark, this is the system of accumulation of electricity produced by the bike, is available in three versions and can be used to power phones, tablets and laptops, especially "on the road", when you are away from home. Ramuel Maramara, the designer, has made some calculations on the reduction of its impact on environmental pollution and came to this conclusion: if even only 1% of Americans would use his Chess Trainer at least one hour a day (every day) it would save a total of 70 thousand tons of CO2 emissions per year. Which would be equivalent to removing from circulation the beauty of 16 thousand cars.
ChessFit Trainer, cost and release date
Chess Trainer is already on pre-order on KickStarter starting at $899 - for the most complete solution - with shipping scheduled from August 2017.