The Morning After: Peloton reveals its smart camera for strength training

You can’t keep a fitness company down. Following some rough financial news from one of the companies that thrived during the pandemic as many took up at-home workouts, Peloton is looking to bounce back, like a burpee, but more business-like.

It just announced the Peloton Guide, a strength-training camera system that looks like Kinect, hooks up to your TV and uses machine learning to understand your movements.

The movement tracker feature is compatible with hundreds of existing Peloton strength classes. The idea is to encourage users to carry out all of the exercises in a class and keep up with instructors (but it’s not a big deal if you can’t stick to the instructor’s pace). The Self Mode will enable users to match their form against the instructor’s in real-time via smart camera technology. You’ll be able to select how you appear on screen, and the aim is to help you make form adjustments during a class.

Peloton will also continue to train the machine learning model on more movements. It will be the company’s least expensive device to date — but that doesn’t make it cheap. It will cost $495 when it arrives in the US in early 2022.

— Mat …read more