The following interview is part of our ongoing Expert Series that asks C-level professionals, team presidents, league executives, athletic directors and other sports influencers about their latest thoughts and insights on new technologies impacting the sports industry.
Paulo Ferreira dos Santos is the Founder and CEO of Kinematix, a Portuguese-based sports technology startup that builds wearable devices that track biomechanics information from athletes in order to help them train and perform more efficiently.
Formerly known as Tomorrow Options, Kinematix began as a medical device company that worked to build accurate tools for measuring and understanding human movement. This start in the medical world ultimately laid the foundation for the creation of Kinematix in 2015. The idea behind creating Kinematix was to take Tomorrow Options’ biomechanic production knowledge and apply it to the burgeoning field of smart wearables.
Below are insights from Paulo and his product team about how they view the wearables space, their technology and what lies ahead at the intersection of technology, wearables and athletes.
1. What utilization of technology in sports has recently blown you away and why?
In all honesty, the possibility of monitoring the feet behaviour on the ground during real sports practice which was achieved with Kinematix TUNE. This allows for the first time to get unique, powerful and vital biomechanical information which until now was only possible inside labs which condition the athlete and are often not representative of the reality.
Developing a small, light, comfortable, reliable, powerful and lasting battery system is really complex, but brings the focus to where it is most important, going beyond what exists today to quantify the performance: how is the athlete doing or what is influencing the performance in biomechanical terms. This is awesome and really new.
2. What is unique about the technology behind Kinematix products?
Who better to answer this question then members from our product team….
Joana Silva – Product Developer, Software – The fact that we actually track the user’s feet as they run and provide real time valuable information.
Luciano Sousa – Product Developer, Hardware – Technology nowadays is scarcely unique. What can be unique is the application it is used in. Kinematix manages to create individuality by allowing step metrics to be measured directly instead of being inferred as is usual in other products.
Simão Varela – Product Developer, Hardware – The technology itself is well known and simple, but the real value lies in the way we’re able to extract crucial and meaningful information and use that same technology to have an impact on the user.
Maria Silva – Industrial Designer – The incomparable aspect of the technology developed by Kinematix is the intense study of foot biomechanics. Understanding body movement and, more specifically, the forces and movements made on the foot plant, is what allows Kinematix to create various products that are able to satisfy multiple needs and be present in different market sectors.
The way in which we step on the ground and the forces transmitted to the various areas of the foot, such as the heal or metatarsus, are intensive study areas and make up part the vast know-how that Kinematix has built. The products we create provide real, precise and trustworthy data, which sets us apart from the rest of the competition.
3. As a skilled technical team member of a sports technology startup that likely has many employment opportunities, what did you find interesting about helping build the technology behind Kinematix?
Joana – The opportunity to help develop wearable technology in a Portuguese startup.
Luciano – Coming from a mathematical oriented background, creating a deeper knowledge in the architecture and implementation of the firmware really enticed me.
Simão – Working in a start-up allows me to push my limits beyond my comfort zone and really expand my knowledge to different areas. The interesting thing about the technology behind the product is the harmonious mixture of different areas and skill sets that come together to produce a single product, and helping in that process has made me much more aware of the little things that makes a product great.
Maria Silva – The main reason that made me want to join Kinematix is the fact that the company works on human factors – Kinematix’s focus is human movement. Since its initial stages where it focused on the medical area and up until now, Kinematix not only studied and developed products that aimed at improving medical services and patient quality of life, but also, now with TUNE, created a new perspective and knowledge area about how humans move and position their bodies. Knowing how we run and walk generates auto-knowledge that influences our own lives and alters or minimizes certain behaviors that may lead to injury or more serious problems. This knowledge makes for a better quality of life.
4. What have your biggest technological challenges been to this point to help get Kinematix to this stage?
Joana – I’d have to say the communication with the TUNE devices. Not in the development phase, but in testing and troubleshooting.
Luciano – The biggest challenge for me was understanding the layout of the firmware to be able to have an event driven system, which means to be able to save energy except when a relevant user related event occurs.
Simão – My biggest challenge was changing my mindset with the way I designed electronic boards. When making a consumer product, different requirements (electronic or otherwise) must complement each other and that is no easy task, but the result is an all-around awesome product.
Maria Silva – There were various challenges with developing TUNE.
Material Selection – selecting a material that was translucent enough to allow for the leads to be seen at work, without compromising on how the PCB functioned. The material had to be resistant but with enough flexibility to allow certain areas of the piece to move without the risk of breaking or deforming. There were also the visual aspects such as color and texture that had to be considered. Mechanic and electric behaviors were also strong factors in the decision making process.
Assembly process selection – Determining the best way to assemble the plastic components, taking into account color and material used, and also the technological capacities of the supplier responsible for the process. These were very important factors that influenced this process.
Lead Time – Normally, mass production requires a lengthy and controlled process. This is something we were able to achieve with great effort and through the right suppliers. Due to this, it only took 6 months between DFM (Design For Manufacturing) and component assembly with PCB, allowing us to launch our product successfully.
5. If you had to project 20 years into the future, what technology will have the most impact on how elite athletes train?
I think in the future a combination of truly wearable technologies will be used daily by athletes, each one getting and providing specific information, from each body part (as each one of them provides a complementary piece of relevant information), but all together providing a good overall overview of the athlete biomechanics (again, knowing more about athlete’s’ biomechanics would be the must). This means the combination of smart footwear, smart apparel, smart wristwear, and smart eyewear, packaged in almost invisible, but powerful technology.
6. If you had to invest in one technology that would change the global sports landscape, what would it be and why?
Smart textiles, as they have a huge potential to be integrated with a lot of other technologies and can be used to get different information in different body parts, without disturbing the athlete during the sports practice.