Armo★ FinalistDeep-reviewed

What they're building

Armo is an Apple Watch-powered fitness gaming product that turns real exercise into game controls. Many people want to work out, but staying consistent is hard because exercise can feel boring, repetitive, and uncomfortable. Armo makes workouts feel more like playing a game. The user wears an Apple Watch, chooses a movement like bicep curls, arm raises, or boxing punches, and their motion controls what happens on screen. For our demo, we built a Flappy Bird-style bicep curl game. When the user curls their arm upward, the bird moves up. When they lower their arm, the bird moves down. To survive, the user has to control their curl angle smoothly and guide the bird through pipes. This turns a normal bicep curl into a skill-based game where timing, control, and consistency matter. We also built an interactive boxing game. In this demo, the user’s arm movements become boxing actions. Punching forward lets the player attack, raising the arm can block, and quick movements can help the player react to incoming attacks. This shows that Armo is not limited to one exercise or one game. The same Apple Watch motion tracking can support different workout styles, from controlled strength movements to faster cardio-based games. Armo uses the motion sensors already inside the Apple Watch, including accelerometer and gyroscope data through Apple’s Core Motion framework. The watch acts like a wearable controller, while the game translates movement into actions. The science behind Armo is called exergaming. When people focus on a game objective instead of the pain or fatigue of exercise, the workout can feel easier and more enjoyable. Instead of thinking about how tired their arm feels, the user focuses on keeping the bird alive, landing punches, blocking attacks, or beating a high score. The hardest part to build was making real human movement feel smooth, accurate, and fair inside a game. Apple Watch sensor data can be noisy, and every user moves differently.