Can artificial intelligence win a championship or that much coveted Gold medal for an individual athlete?
Well, one company has not one but two solutions that incorporates artificial intelligence (AI) technology into sports wearables.
PIQ is a start-up based in France that has been working for two years to develop this AI interface. The company has poured more than $18 million into this project and has currently a team of 50 engineers working on AI interface that informs the athlete’s own “winning factors”, while also pinpointing key strengths and strategy for success.
According to PIQ, connected sports are limited as they just capture basic data. PIQ has launched GAIA, an autonomous system that analyzes sport movements. The company’s second product is called PIQ Robot, which is an ultra-high performance sensor. GAIA can be embedded into the PIQ Robot sensor.
Movement data can be captured and even broken down through specific motion-capture algorithms. PIQ has tested GAIA with many athletes during its two-year research and development phase and with that have registered more than a million movements. The company calls this its own automatic learning curve further expanding the intelligence of the product. This multi-algorithmic machine-learning intelligence is a result of both fundamental and applied research introducing the capacity to understand and analyze microscopic variations in sport movements.
Cédric Mangaud, CEO and co-founder of the company, said GAIA enables sports wearables to enter a new paradigm. “Our technology enables athletes, not only to measure their performance, but also to benefit from personalized advice and get closer to victory. Our goal is now to integrate this technology in sport devices to offer athletes a fully integrated experience,” Mangaud said.
PIQ Robot features a nano-computer capable of analyzing more than 195,000 data points per minute in real time.
The company now believes the two products are able to measure millions of actions generated in every hour of a game or individual competition that can be analyzed later on.
As an example, athletes can compare past performances on a specific day as well as measure them versus the other competitors.
PIQ’s go to market strategy consists of technology partnerships. PIQ has inked an agreement with tennis equipment manufacturer Babolat, app developer for golf Mobitee, ski maker Rossignol and North Kiteboarding in kite-surfing, which has dealer locations in Canada, the U.S., Europe and parts of Asia.