This Robotic Warden Forces You to Finish Every Rep of Your Push-Ups

We’re currently in peak “about to give up on New Year’s resolutions” territory and if you haven’t already thrown in the towel, then you are probably in need of something to compensate for your increasingly frail willpower. The goal is obviously to foster new healthy habits, but that means getting through several weeks of pure perseverance. The best way to make sure you succeed is to make it impossible to fail by implementing measures that you cannot circumvent. YouTuber I Made This certainly took that philosophy to heart when he built this robotic warden that forces him to finish every push-up of his workout.

The hardest part of working out is actually starting the workout, but the second-hardest part is, ya know, doing the exercise. This robotic contraption ensures that once that workout starts, it cannot be stopped. It is essentially a stockade for the feet that locks in place and that won’t free its prisoner until a set number of reps have been completed. If, for instance, you have it set to 20 reps, then you have to do all 20. If you only manage 19 of those reps, then you’re going to end up laying on the ground like seal in a bear trap until you muster up the strength to knock out that final push-up. It is an effective, if masochistic, way to keep yourself from tapping out too soon. That said, we really hate to imagine a fire breaking out that would require a very frantic workout to escape.

This “robot” consists of two linear actuators that are mounted to a wooden frame that resembles a medieval pillory. When it is time for exercise, the user slides their feet through the frame. Once activated, the actuators contract to lock the user’s ankles firmly in place. Some sort of machine learning model is a running on a nearby computer that monitors the trapped user through a webcam. That model is able to recognize a push-up and keeps count of how many have been completed. Only after the goal rep count has been reached will the robot open the stockade back up. I Made This provides very little detail about the specifics of this project, but we really hope there is some sort of failsafe in place just in case of an emergency or a computer error. Then again, such a failsafe could probably be exploited by the user to end the workout early, which is a bit of a catch-22.