Meet Carv The World’s First AI Ski Instructor

Navin Bondade 1 Comment Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Deep Learning, Machine Learning

The world’s first AI digital ski coach is here. And you know what it is almost invisible. The AI digital ski coach is smartly folded in a pocket or into a boot. Inside the boot there are two sensor-packed footbeds, communicating via Bluetooth to the smartphone.

The AI digital ski coach can see every move of the rider, from the angle of the ski edges to the relative pressure exerted by each toe.

An average turn is last up to a minute during which the AI digital ski coach is capable of collecting and analyzing more than 5,000 pieces of information. It can record more than 70 metrics on every turn which broadly fit into four distinct categories: balance, edging, rotary, and pressure.

The systems come with an arrangement of 48 pressure sensors, that is fitted under each foot. The job of these sensors is to tell if the weight is forward or back at the right point of the turn and whether the weight is being transferred smoothly from ski to ski. The movement of the phone inside the jacket pocket can also tell if the upper body position is correctly facing the fall line.

You can also leave your smartphone and a digital voice will pipe up to give you a simple overall score for your run, a “Ski: IQ”. You can choose any instruction that suits your potential and the app will talk to you as you ski via cordless headphones. It will give some tips and encouragement, and marking each turn.

During free-skiing, the AI will silently record your field performance, you can check out your smartphone to get an overview over performance and for understanding where improvements are needed. Base on performance this AI digital ski coach set goals for you like increasing speed or landing after a jump.

The name of this apps is Carv. It is an invention of Canada-based start-up Motion Metrics. The company is set to revolutionize the way people ski.

Carv is an all-time learning program, riders every turn is stored in its servers, so the programme can begin to identify which instructions and drills you respond best to, as well as comparing you to other skiers of a similar type.

The company recently released a video on their website shows Carv sending data to a smartphone, The data is processed into real-time feedback, delivered orally by the AI ski coach through headphones.

At the end of each session, the AI ski coach informs the user whether or not they have completed the level and can move on to the next. The data can sync with the Carv cloud and shared on social media.

“Rather than just give the raw data, and appeal to a niche of serious racers, we decided we wanted to create a coaching experience which will actually teach the average person how to get better — and that is a much more complex problem,” says Jamie Grant, chief executive of Motion Metrics told the Financial Times.

Mr. Grant is now of 32 and had a degree from Oxford. Grant was working as an intern for Barclays Capital while doing a Ph.D. in financial economics at Imperial College London.

“I was looking at using machine learning to optimize portfolio allocation in futures markets, so that gave me exposure to coding, statistics and data science. I became interested in the idea of using the same techniques to try to understand my own data as I skied.”

Carv can’t teach beginners, it can’t direct you to the best mountain restaurants, it can’t carry your skis and it certainly can’t flirt in an endearing French accent. It’s the pricing of a single day with a private instructor would typically cost about £500 in the Alps. If we bought before December, Carv’s footbeds and app be of £229,