StepMan - matching music to your moves

The use of mobile music players is very common. While sitting in a subway, at breakfast or even while practising sports people like to be entertained by listening to music. Music expresses our mood and let us move to its rhythm. In the field of sport, joggers do have the problem that rhythm of music often does not go with the speed and rhythm of their steps while running. The StepMan technology is a new kind of music interaction. Using multiple sensors to measure pace, pulse and other data, the music will be adapted in real time to fit the actual situation of the jogger. The speed of music will be varied without changing the pitch of the sound. In addition, StepMan can be used as a personal trainer which presents music with defined speed, calculated by bio parameters (pulse, calorie consumption, personal training condition, etc.) and the runner has to hold the given rhythm. The work described also shows how the StepMan interacts with the user in an ambient manner, using no direct user input but biometric sensor information and provides a multimodal output. In addition to sports application, research activities for StepMan are presented below.