Bally Total Fitness introduces gesture-based video technology

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Courtney Boyd Myers

Courtney Boyd Myers is the founder of audience.io, a transatlantic company designed to help New York and London based technology startups gr (show all) Courtney Boyd Myers is the founder of audience.io, a transatlantic company designed to help New York and London based technology startups grow internationally. Previously, she was the Features Editor and East Coast Editor of TNW covering New York City startups and digital innovation. She loves magnets + reading on a Kindle. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter @CBM and Google +.

While everyone is getting in shape using their Wii or Microsoft Kinect, Bally Total Fitness, a popular gym chain, has hopped on board and leveraged SoftKinetic technology to install futuristic gesture-based interactive video walls on their gyms.

Basically, imagine an eight-foot tall television with a gesture camera (like Xbox Kinect) that gym-goers can manipulate without touching. The screens will have fitness and nutrition information, workout tips and even a feature that “slims down” a photo of the user, to help get them get educated and excited about fitness.

Bally also collaborated with a San Francisco company called Helios to send the information from the Kinect, into Flash. Once the tracking information is in flash, users can then manipulate it to control the rest of the experience.

By the end of the year, Bally plans to open 15-20 new clubs featuring the new screens. This following video is a preview of the new Bally Results Center which is currently going live in their new high-end clubs.

And don’t miss our report on The Future of Health and Fitness.