Plantiga TechnologiesThe Vancouver-based motion analysis company helps people improve their rehabilitation and reduce injury risk through artificial intelligence-powered monitoring sensor pods that can be embedded in shoes, orthotics, or insoles to analyze a user’s movement patterns. We want to help alleviate this.
Plantiga is participating in TechCrunch Disrupt 2023’s Startup Battlefield and has been around for a while, but has just launched. of 5th generation sensor pod, Arc5with minimal exposure and funding as of June this year, with only about $5.2 million raised to date.
Plantiga co-founder and CEO Quinn Sandler founded the company in 2017 with his father, Norman McKay, as a side project. However, two weeks after Plantiga acquired the Seattle Mariners and Los Angeles Lakers, his father suddenly passed away from advanced prostate cancer. While the company is working on a proof-of-concept pilot project. Creative destroy lab accelerator program As part of the 2017 cohort.
His late father had been working on gait labs for years, saying that being able to create gait labs inside shoes would change the way people monitor their health, movement, and well-being, and said it would be “a bolt-out-of-the-blue opportunity for a lot of different people.” ” I knew it would bring. Sandler says.
Plantiga’s AI is an athletic coach named Norman, named after his late father, Sandler added.
Arc5 can collect up to 12 hours of movement data. This data gives health professionals, such as podiatrists and experts associated with sports teams, insight into how their subjects are moving. The company explains that “movement is a biomarker of human health” because it can “predict rehabilitation outcomes, injury and fall risk, disease progression, and optimize performance.” It is.
“We developed a model that learns how people move over four to five sessions and predicts when they will move differently than their baseline,” Sandler said. “Our AI can learn and monitor human movements. [that] For changes, it suggests areas that need strengthening and assesses limb strength. ”
Image credits: Plantiga
The core challenge that Plantiga is solving is one that has long persisted, even in the age of quantified self-technology. Simply put, measuring people’s biomechanics in real-world settings can be difficult. Unlike other motion analytics or wearable devices such as watches or rings that measure parts of the body such as the lungs or heart, Plantiga’s monitoring sensor pod, an Internet of Things (IoT) system, is designed to ” to capture data. Sandler explains that the “ecologically appropriate movements” of human biomechanics can be achieved in the gym, on the field, and anywhere in between, without the need for cameras, cables, or additional sensors.
Plantiga currently has approximately 90 customers, including elite athletes from NBA, MLB, MLS, NFL, NHL, and NCAA sports teams, physical therapists, coaches, surgeons, athletic trainers, the Canadian Armed Forces, and several other military units. Masu.
Sandler added that they intend to expand into a broader consumer market downstream, which is certainly a big opportunity. Global sports technology market It is projected to increase from $14.72 billion in 2023 to $55.14 billion by 2030.Global wearable technology market is expected to grow $186.14 billion by 2030the compound annual growth rate from 2023 will increase by 14.6%.
In addition, Sandler added that the company is working with a number of major footwear brands on co-development, licensing and distribution.
Investors include Radical Ventures, Vanedge Capital, and angel investors such as Haig Farris (founder of D-Wave) and Bernie Pell.
Not surprisingly, Sandler said Plantiga is in the process of raising new funding, although he declined to reveal the exact size of the funding. The nine-employee company expects to reach profitability within the next six months.