Treadmill adaptive speed control
OwnerRonald J. Rileyinventor
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A treadmill having an adaptive speed control for the belt drive in which members engageable by the user to be pulled have signal generators associated therewith to enable signals proportioned to the degree of pulling to be used to correspondingly reduce a selected belt speed so that a lagging pace of the user is detected and the belt speed reduced automatically. Hand rails and/or pivoted vertical poles can be used as the user-engageable members. The mean position of the poles can be monitored to generate signals corresponding to the degree of pulling exerted by the user.
Claims12
A treadmill having a platform, an endless belt loop supported on said platform so as to have an upper belt run on which a user may stride and a drive motor for recirculating said endless belt, selectively operated controls for operating said drive motor at a selected speed to drive said endless belt at a selected speed, an improved drive motor control comprising:
- a user-held member configured to be pulled by a user while striding on said upper run of said endless belt loop;
- adaptive speed control means including control signal generating means responsive to the degree of pulling action exerted on said member to generate control signals proportional to the degree of pulling exerted by said user, and to reduce selected belt speed to an extent corresponding to the magnitude of said control signals.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.