At its best, running on a treadmill is the best simulation of running outdoors there is. But as any seasoned athlete will tell you, you need to jack up the incline to even begin to mimic the real thing. Treadmills are not the intuitive pieces of kit that runners really want and part of that problem is that you have to manually tell it when you want to run faster or slower.

A research team from the Ohio State University thinks it has found a solution. Its new automated treadmill uses sonar to tell exactly where the runner is on the ribbon, and adjust the speed accordingly. If the runner moves towards the front of the running belt, the speed will automatically increase and at any sign of the runner slowing down the speed will start to decrease, resulting in an experience that is much closer to running outdoors. "If you’re running outside and you want to speed up or slow down, there is no button to push. It is the same with this new automated treadmill," says Steven T Devor, an associate professor of kinesiology who has been working on the project. "It is seamless and feels completely natural. You just go."

Ohio State University


For anyone who has ever sprinted on a treadmill and then manually had to decrease their speed, this news will come as a blessed relief.

The automated treadmill has been constructed from inexpensive off-the-shelf technology, including a sonar range finder. The sonar is aimed between the runner's shoulder blades, and senses when they are moving away from the device and are therefore picking up speed, or getting nearer to the device and slowing down. "It is all seamless and the runner doesn’t even know that it’s happening," says Devor.

The belt reacts so quickly to the information being it fed to it from the sonar, by way of a microcontroller and computer, that it can ensure even an elite runner won't hit plastic when they start to sprint.

Full details of how the automated treadmill was put together and tested have been outlined in the journal Medicine & Science in Sports and Exercise. It is currently in the final prototype stage, and should be ready to head to market soon.