News & Events

Source | HiTechCanada

In the past, we often saw such scenes on TV or in the swimming pool: the coach was holding the stopwatch while observing the swimmers’ various states at the swimming pool. In some professional swimming teams in Canada, traditional training methods are being replaced by scientific and technological means.

Athletes only need a sophisticated headgear, and coaches only use a tablet computer, so they can simultaneously and real-time monitor various key training indicators of multiple athletes. These data are finally presented in an intuitive way, and coaches can take targeted improvement measures to make athletes swim faster.

This device is Triton, a startup in Waterloo, which is specially developed for swimmers. The first and most accurate data driven AI training equipment in the world.

Speaking of TritonWear, we should also start from the personal experience of its founder Tristan Lehari. Tristan Lehari once studied mechanical and electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo. During his school years, he was also a master swimmer in the university swimming team and once served as the team leader.

During the training, he felt that the efficiency of traditional training methods was too low. Both athletes and coaches felt that they needed to improve their training skills and methods. “We need a more intuitive and timely motion detection method, so as to improve the training effect more specifically,” Tristan told HiTech.

So he and his classmate Darius Gai integrated some sensors into the GoPro camera and wore them behind their heads during training, which can monitor some key indicators during swimming. This jigsaw puzzle is the prototype of the later Triton product.

This small device was praised by athletes and coaches after trial, which undoubtedly inspired Tristan and Darius to further develop this product. In 2014, they established TritonWear and developed a series of sensors integrated into a smaller and more streamlined device, which is now known as Triton.

The entire Triton system is a closed loop of SaaS services composed of hardware, communication modules, cloud, AI engines and terminals. Its core IP is an algorithm model with independent intellectual property rights. “The most powerful and unique part of our products is the AI engine and data processing capability,” Tristan said. According to him, TritonWear has accumulated data for two or three years to train its AI engine, and has a leading edge in time and data.

At the same time, the equipment has excellent waterproof function, and the communication module can effectively resist the interference caused by various factors such as water and movement, so the key indicators of athletes in swimming can be accurately monitored and captured. This performance is 4-5 times that of other similar sports products.

The way Triton works is that athletes fix Triton at the back of their heads through the bandage of swimming goggles. During training, key indicators such as speed, paddling, turning and breathing will be accurately captured by sensors. These data are uploaded to the cloud through the communication module. After that, its proprietary algorithm and AI engine will process these data and finally present them to the coach in an intuitive way.

Its benefits are also quite obvious. For coaches, Triton is equivalent to an assistant coach. It can monitor the training of up to 50 athletes at the same time. The automatically collected accurate data allows coaches to spend more time focusing on the swimming performance of athletes instead of stopwatches. At the same time, accurate and unbiased data can be accumulated continuously, which can enable coaches to propose targeted improvement suggestions for each athlete, and ultimately enable athletes to swim faster.

For athletes, Triton can simultaneously collect 12 key indicators such as swimming speed, turning, stroke frequency, stroke distance, swimming posture, and breathing mode. Regular tracking of these data and subsequent improvement will continuously improve the competitive level of athletes.

At the Rio Olympics last year, Triton made its debut on the world stage. During the Olympic Games, TritonWear made its debut on the world stage of social media, and cooperated with the famous swimming media SwimSwam to deliver post competition analysis for all swimming finals.

On this international platform, TritonWear demonstrated the insight gained by athletes and coaches in the process of technical training!

“Using TritonWear’s data makes athletes more efficient, not just training them, but ultimately making them faster.” Ben Titley, head coach of the Rio Olympics in Canada, said so about Triton last summer.

“I would recommend TritonWear to any swimming coach – this is the development direction of competitive sports.” When the Canadian Olympic swimming team returned from Rio last year, it brought back six medals, more than twice the number of the previous one.

As an AI and data-driven swimming training assistant, Triton has developed a new market in swimming training. At present, there are more than 130 swimming clubs and sports teams in 24 countries, and more than 1600 athletes are using Triton for daily training.

According to Tristan, Triton’s business model is $15 hardware rent+$5-25 software monthly fee. Existing users are very happy to pay, and the longest users have been paying for nearly 20 months.

Triton’s success has also made TritonWear popular in the capital market. Since its inception, the company has received an investment of $2 million, including a financing of $1 million after participating in CAMP last year. At present, TritonWear is seeking round A financing and plans to raise $5 million.

The new financing will help TritonWear further improve its AI engine capability, enable this AI assistant to give some guidance directly, and help coaches and athletes gain more insight. At the same time, TritonWear will also open up new markets and prepare to enter such fields as racing and bicycle training.

Hitech Canada, Canada’s first Chinese technology venture capital new media, made an in-depth report on Beagle in September this year. Because of its progressiveness technology and broad application scenarios, Beagle has also received a lot of attention in the capital market, not only becoming the first Canadian start-up of Microsoft Venture Capital Accelerator, but also receiving strategic investment from CCAA (China Canada Angel Alliance), NextLaw Ventures and other institutions. It is reported that Beagle will launch round A financing at the end of this year, with a target amount of 15 million dollars.