US 5,469,740 · Granted 1995-11-28
The Video Game That Measures Your Reaction Speed Like Never Before
Imagine a video game where the floor itself watches your feet move, timing how fast you react to visual cues on a screen. This 1995 patent describes a system that combines pressure-sensitive floor targets with on-screen prompts to measure your leg speed and agility in real time — like a fitness test that feels like play.
The plain-English version
What it protects
The claim covers a testing system where floor-mounted load sensors detect when and where a person steps, synchronized with video cues that direct them to move in specific patterns. What's protected here is the combination of the pressure-sensing field, the on-screen visual display, and the software that connects foot placement timing to performance metrics like reaction speed and movement sequence accuracy.
Why it matters
This patent captures an early approach to interactive, video-based athletic training where feedback is immediate and measurable. Rather than a coach with a stopwatch, the system automates performance assessment and makes training feel like a game. For sports science, physical therapy, and fitness facilities, this kind of real-time motion capture and scoring opened up new ways to train and diagnose movement patterns.
Real-world use
You'd step on lit targets on a specialized floor while following prompts flashing on a screen in front of you, and the system instantly grades how fast and accurately you responded — similar to modern dance-game floors or athletic training rigs used in professional sports facilities.
Original USPTO abstract
A testing and training system for measuring and assessing leg reaction movement sequence of a subject includes a test field having a plurality of load sensing target positions defining vectored movement paths for the subject, the field and target positions being replicated on a video screen positioned frontally with respect to the subject with visual cues presented on the screen directing movement between positions with hardware and software processing the cues and signals from the target positions to determine time intervals associated with changes in loading during the movement and determining reaction movement sequence parameters based thereon.
Patent details
- Publication number
- US 5,469,740
- Filing date
- 1992-12-02
- Grant date
- 1995-11-28
- Assignee
- Impulse Technology, Inc.
- Inventor(s)
- FRENCH; BARRY J., FERGUSON; KEVIN R., MCDONALD, III; HALLEY A., GLASS; ANDREW B., MOHANSINGH; TIMOTHY, BORGES; GREGORY
- CPC class
- G01L1/16
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