Wearable Technology and Connected Skiing - Snowcookie

This a subject that's starting to get some attention, so we thought we'd start a discussion here and see what you all think.

We've recently had Snowcookie get in touch with us and they have :-

Snowcookie wrote:a multi-sensor system that measures skiing performance and technique

We'll let them introduce their technology here. They're looking for feedback...

Hi everyone,
My name is Mateusz (you can call me mati) and I am Chief Scientist at Snowcookie team. We are a team of passionate skiers who would like to change the way we see skiing today.



Before I tell you more about us and our work, I would like to say thank you to David for letting us join your great community. This is a great pleasure for us and also a big challenge to reach such a big skiers audience. We hope to get a lot of new experience and feedback about what we do and our vision of the future of skiing. Hope you will enjoy it too and will give a try to any of smart wearables for skiers. Why I said that? Because the smart wearables ski gear branch is very narrow and not popular among skiers. We would like to tell you more about those products here, discuss with you about them and also present our own system in more details.

Snowcookie (https://snowcookiesports.com) is a smart sensor system designed to measure technique and style of skiing. If you want it or not we stand right before a revolution in skiing, where various sensor would be introduced in smart skis, ski boots or external sensors like our system. This is just another step in electronics miniaturization and its applicability in new domains. Our phones or smart watches can already calculate quite a lot of parameters – steps count, quality of swimming/cycling/running, VO2max, even sleep quality!! (yeah – I was skeptical about it too, but I have a 12 days old son and you might not believe in this but my watch has clearly noticed a rapid drop in my sleep quality exactly 2 weeks ago, when my wife returned with him back home!). Leading ski gear manufacturers already tried or are trying hard right now to introduce this technology in their products – i.e. PIQ powered by Rossignol (https://www.rossignol.com/de/alpine-piq) or Atomic's Hawx Connected ski boots (https://www.nordicsemi.com/News/2019/03/Atomic-ski-boot-integrates-multiple-force-and-motion-sensors). Also FIS is moving forward, allowing similar sensors in ski jumping. We want to be a pioneers and visionaries in this trend, which we call "connected skiing", because it is not only measuring skiing – it is really about connecting skiers together to offer them completely new services and features on the slopes and when they leave the slopes. Measuring skiers is just an entry point to that new, upcoming, dimension of skiing – Skiing 2.0.

Snowcookie goal was to not only asses skiers based on the GPS based statistics (speed, distance, elevation drop, number of runs), like most of available solutions (mobile apps) do now, but also directly, based on what happened during the run – number of turns, their max edge angles, technique of turning, turn types, the quality of the turns, skiers stance over the whole run, body mass distribution, dynamic and many, many more. We have developed a system containing tree sensors – two for the skis and one for the chest – to continuously monitor skiers behavior. Provided data allow us to do a complex motion analysis and point out areas that skier should improve to become simply better at skiing.

We are working with coaches from US an Europe. Based on that cooperation we have developed seven main parameters scoring skiers: Level, Speed, Stance, Engagement, Stamina, Turn iQ and Style. Level is inspired with the PSIA levels for recreational skiers and rest seems to be clear for everyone. Level goes from 0 up to 10 where 0 is used only to mark that user did not do any run and we do not know anything about it. 1 is for skiers who have just started to ski, they can barely plow, while level 10 is reserved for Lindsey Vonn or Bode Miller Rest of levels scale in between over skidding turns and finally carving turns, considering also other already mentioned parameters.

We aim to guide skiers to develop on one hand safely – equally in all fields, adequately to their current skills, on the other hand we want them to improve quicker, showing parameters previously unseen. But that is not the end – we wanted to also to introduce new dimension of fun. We start with challenges, where skiers can challenge themselves or challenge also other skiers in various aspects. Only time and amount of data we deliver constraint you in that and believe me – number of parameters to compete is quite large and can be even larger with your help.

If you find this topic, or in general group of smart ski gear products, interesting and you have any questions about them, we are here for you. If you have any specific questions about our system, we would be also pleased to discuss it with you. We hope that this discussion will validate our approach to digitization of skiing and give us a chance to convince you to try it out right now, before this revolution comes for good. Any feedback is welcome and we will do our best to satisfy your hunger of knowledge or resolving all your doubts about smart wearables for skiers.

Mati

Your product doesn't actually seem to exist to buy - your website has a kickstarter logo, but the product's not on kickstarter. Your website says "sign up for the 2019 Winter Season", but 3 weeks away and there's nowhere to buy the product ...

Product looks really interesting. I know there is a similar product for golf but I have not used it. You attach sensors to each of your clubs and it gives you a read out after the round of every shot hit - distance, direction, etc.

In relation to skiing, I would see a few issues that limit the product. For a start, it does not seem to me that this could be used with hire skis. Given that most recreational skiers still hire skis, the market would seem to be limited. Secondly, most recreational skiers may not want or see a need for such a sophisticated level of assessment or even be able to process the information the information it provides, much less translate that into improved technique. It strikes me that it is possibly a product to build into more accurate coaching, perhaps similar to the way lots of golf pros are now using https://trackmangolf.com/ to aid with golf instruction.

Anyway, well done on the technology and I wish you well with the product.

daveg180 wrote:Your product doesn't actually seem to exist to buy - your website has a kickstarter logo, but the product's not on kickstarter. Your website says "sign up for the 2019 Winter Season", but 3 weeks away and there's nowhere to buy the product ...

Hi @daveg180,
Thanks for your comment. That is correct - we can not sell individually if we do Kickstarter campaign - this are the rules of their platform. We are currently preparing for the campaign and we should launch on 15th of December if everything works well with paperwork from both sides. If you are interested you can always subscribe to our mailing list to be notified about further details. If you have any other questions we are here so feel free to ask.

Wanderer wrote:Product looks really interesting. I know there is a similar product for golf but I have not used it. You attach sensors to each of your clubs and it gives you a read out after the round of every shot hit - distance, direction, etc.

In relation to skiing, I would see a few issues that limit the product. For a start, it does not seem to me that this could be used with hire skis. Given that most recreational skiers still hire skis, the market would seem to be limited. Secondly, most recreational skiers may not want or see a need for such a sophisticated level of assessment or even be able to process the information the information it provides, much less translate that into improved technique. It strikes me that it is possibly a product to build into more accurate coaching, perhaps similar to the way lots of golf pros are now using https://trackmangolf.com/ to aid with golf instruction.

Anyway, well done on the technology and I wish you well with the product.

Hi @Wanderer,
Thanks for those good words about us in the first place. But answering your doubts about renting skis - we are doing in parallel pilot program with ski rentals to workout best possible procedure of providing skis with Snowcookies already on. Additionally - current mounts are just like GoPro mounts - easily detachable and attachable. You just buy new stickers and you can put your sensors on next pair of skis. We also work on next generation of mounts which would allow you even simpler attach and detach from any skis, even non flat ones. As for the complexity of data we provide and present - we are aware of it and partially that is why we aim in Kickstarter campaign with new coaching features. We want them to simplify everything a lot, giving you off-course still access to those low level, professional insights on demand.

Wanderer wrote:Product looks really interesting. I know there is a similar product for golf but I have not used it. You attach sensors to each of your clubs and it gives you a read out after the round of every shot hit - distance, direction, etc.

@Wanderer, as you mentioned golf I might suggest you to look at those products, as they work similar to our platform. They might be interesting for you.

Arccos Golf: https://eu.arccosgolf.com
Game Golf: https://www.gamegolf.com
Chip-ing: https://chip-ing.com
Mobitee (with PIQ - our previous competitor in skiing supported by Rossigniol)http://www.mobitee.com/en/mobitee-piq-features
Zepp: https://www.zepp.com/en-us/

Being a solid intermediate skier who enjoys the mountains I just don't want to ski to the bottom as quick as possible, to me it's all about skiing in control & having felt the beauty of the turns.
I believe you can never stop learning whilst skiing.
I presume the sensors are all Bluetooth & not wired, as I'm 2.06 m tall.
When using Snowcookie does it update details at the end of a run or pass information through headphones?
Very interested will sign up to get email updates.