The physicality of exercise makes the role of athletic trainers unique. Their physical presence allows them to guide a student through a motion, demonstrate an exercise, and give intuitive feedback. Robot quadrupeds are also embodied agents with robust agility and athleticism. In our work, we investigate whether a robot quadruped can serve as an effective and enjoyable personal trainer device. We focus on a case study of interval training for runners: a repetitive, long-horizon task where precision and consistency are important. To meet this challenge, we propose SNOOPIE, an autonomous robot quadruped pacer capable of running interval training exercises tailored to challenge a user's personal abilities. We conduct a set of user experiments that compare the robot trainer to a wearable trainer device--the Apple Watch--to investigate the benefits of a physical embodiment in exercise-based interactions. We demonstrate 60.6% better adherence to a pace schedule and were 45.9% more consistent across their running speeds with the quadruped trainer. Subjective results also showed that participants strongly preferred training with the robot over wearable devices across many qualitative axes, including its ease of use (+56.7%), enjoyability of the interaction (+60.6%), and helpfulness (+39.1%). Additional videos and visualizations can be found on our website: https://sites.google.com/view/snoopie

翻译：运动的身体性使运动教练的角色独具特色。其物理存在使其能够引导学员完成动作、示范训练项目，并提供直观反馈。四足机器人同样是具备强大敏捷性和运动能力的具身智能体。本研究探讨四足机器人能否成为有效且令人愉悦的私人训练设备。我们聚焦于跑步间歇训练这一案例：该任务具有重复性与长周期特性，对精准度和一致性要求较高。为应对这一挑战，我们提出SNOOPIE——一种自主四足机器人佩斯装置，能够根据用户个人能力量身定制间歇训练方案。通过一系列用户实验，我们将机器人教练与可穿戴训练设备Apple Watch进行对比，以探究运动交互中物理具身性的优势。实验表明，使用四足机器人教练时，训练者配速计划 adherence 率提升60.6%，跑步速度一致性提高45.9%。主观评价结果也显示，参与者在多个定性维度上强烈偏好机器人训练器而非可穿戴设备，包括易用性（+56.7%）、交互愉悦度（+60.6%）和帮助性（+39.1%）。更多视频与可视化内容详见我们的网站：https://sites.google.com/view/snoopie