Bikes turned into game controllers

CycleScore is a MIT project that merges video gaming with a recumbent bicycle.

The bike's pedals and handlebars are turned into game controllers, and the game program rewards steady effort and the occasional burst of speed.

The game consists of steering a hot-air balloon over mountains -- might get a little old after a while, even if the balloonist can fire missiles at passing targets for extra points.

But MIT students hope to eventually offer a suite of slam-bam action games and plan a version that'll let workout buffs link their bikes over the Internet and compete against each other.

They should hurry up as a similar bike has been developed by Japanese company, the CatEye's gamebike allows you to control any Playstation 2 race game with the bicycle: steering with the handlebars and pedaling for speed.

From Boston.com, and La Repubblica.

Update for those (like me) never read the comments sent by readers.

Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Shii-Ann Huang did a similar project in 1999.

An article from the New York Times mentioned Netgym, a system connecting stationary bicycles to computers that showed a virtual bike trail. The students were planning to create "an Internet-based game, where people on exercise bikes anywhere in the world could race each other in a virtual world while pedaling in their own homes."