Mechatronic Design: Tactive
Master Industrial Design Engineering - University of Ghent Campus Kortrijk - January 2020
Skills: Adobe Photoshop - Adobe Illustrator - Adobe After Effects - Adobe Premier Pro - Adobe XD - Group project
- Siemens NX - Prototyping & User testing - Arduino - Machine learning
For the course 'Mechatronisch Productontwerpen', five UGent students developed Tactive, an extension of the Ipitup fitness bench. Tactive is a website and mobile application, which, in addition to an individual exercise program, can also provide feedback to athletes about their performance on the Ipitup fitness bench via skeleton tracking. In addition, the app allows users to track their own sports performance, compare there performance over a period or with other athletes and connect with other users of the Tactive-app.
More information about the app and the project can be found below on the poster, in the video and with the additional explanation and figures.
More information about the app and the project can be found below on the poster, in the video and with the additional explanation and figures.
Team: Sophie Blancquaert, Robin Coussens, Lien Devesse and Bram Van Laere are Industrial Design students and Melissa Benoit is an ICT student. This interdisciplinary collaboration made it possible to make the project successful.
Video
A 2 minute video was made to promote and show the use of the app and fitness bench. The video was shown during the presentation of the project and can be viewed underneath or with this Link.
Exercises
The project was carried out in one semester (= 5 months). We therefore limited the number of exercises on which feedback would be given with the app. The exercises chosen are the squat, the pull-up and the upright push-up. These exercises can also be seen in the figures below.
Sound reinforcement smartphone holders
A smartphone holder was designed of the project. This holder would be made out of a metal and would be placed on rods around the fitness bench of Ipitup. During the design process of the holder attention was given to design against vandalism. The rods on which the holders are placed, are standard rods which are used in Belgium to block ways and/or to park bikes along.
The holder got the dimensions to fit all smartphones and make sure that the camera of the smartphone could film the exercise on the fitness bench. The holder is made in a way that reinforces sound to help give feedback during the exercise or to play music.
The placements of the smartphone holders and the holders themselves can be seen in the figures below.
Sensors
Pressure sensors are added to the fitness bench. These sensors detect when the user is ready to start the exercise and will start the recording on the app to give the feedback on the exercises. The sensors were prototyped for user testing of the app. These sensors were made with velostat and an Adruino.
In reality, the sensors would be absorbed in the fitness bench so that they are aesthetic and functional. Absorbing the sensors in the bench would also counter theft or/and vandalism. This absorbing of the sensors was not worked out in detail, but the photos below show what this would look like for the exercises that were worked out in this project.
Branding
We gave our app the name Tactive. This comes from the word 'active' to emphasise sport and fitness. We added a 'T' to the name because this refers to the skeleton-tracking which is done by the app.
We added the colour orange because this is a strong colour with a lot of energy which we wanted our app to represent. Otherwise, the style of the Tactive app is in the same style as Ipitup.
Mock-ups & Demo
A mock-up of the app was made with Adobe XD. This can be seen with this Link.
The app was also programmed by the ICT student. The app used skeleton-tracking and machine learning to analyse the exercises and give feedback to the user. This app is not public but is visualized with the mock-ups in the figures below and with the demo of the app in Adobe XD.
