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Indoor climbing is a difficult sport to follow. That’s why the Spanish startup Lezcor It caught the attention of TechCrunch at MWC earlier this year. The team of two founders — led by CEO Edgar Casanovas Llorente, a climbing instructor and guide turned entrepreneur — has been showing off equipment they hope climbing gyms will see that herald the kind of social play that all other types of sports already have, thanks To the emergence of wearable devices and activity tracking applications.
The system created by Lizcore only requires the climber to wear a lightweight fabric NFC bracelet to track their sport, meaning they don’t need to climb with their cell phone or other chunky device. The band works in conjunction with smart base units and top mounts – allowing track statistics to be captured and progress monitored in the Lizcore app.
A few months later, the startup raised a seed round of funding while working to commercialize its devices. The team has earned a total of €600,000 at this point (about $630,000 at current exchange rates). Funding comes from several investors and business angels, including Startup Wise Guys, as well as individual and corporate backers from the sector, as well as a significant portion of state support (in the form of an interest-free loan of €200,000, and some grants). .
They also recently signed their first local client: a climbing gym called Drac de Pedra in the Catalan city of Rubí, where they held a demo event for their trail-tracking technology earlier this month. “They want the full installation. But they’re going to start with 30 lanes, which means 10 devices,” co-founder and CTO Marsal Juan told TechCrunch.
Although digitizing indoor climbing is still key (ha!) for Lizcore Playground, the team’s first priority is to finish work on a safety device for automatic installations. Juan says they hope to complete this within 6 to 12 months — though he laughs knowingly when TechCrunch repeats the mantra that “hardware is hard” (“Yes, really hard!”), also acknowledging that they’ve got some things down. Reliability issues with their track tracking suite that they are working on as well.
Lizcore’s original team of co-founders has grown to nine people as they expand their efforts to showcase the system, improve the hardware, and attract more gyms interested in purchasing.
NFC + AI = Automatically raise the security level
For any non-climbers, auto-anchors are devices that gyms can install at the top of higher climbing routes to allow climbers to ascend without needing someone else to support them. Each of these mechanical machines has a retractable harness attached to a carabiner that the climber must attach to her harness before climbing to do so safely.
The system is very safe when used correctly. However, there have been cases where climbers forgot to attach themselves to the automatic stabilization system before ascending, resulting in a tragic fall.
Cutting the carabiner to the wrong part of the harness is another big risk. Gyms usually require climbers to have a credential (usually in the form of a card they attach to their equipment) proving they are Or wit With all the security features automated before they can use them. But monitoring this requires a staff member on hand to constantly check that each climber has the necessary credentials. Often times, this simply doesn’t happen – so there’s always a risk of climbing gyms where people who don’t know how to use this equipment properly could get into trouble.
Lizcore believes they’ve found a clever way to improve the safety of automation equipment and help gyms reduce all of these safety risks (and their legal liability). First, by allowing credentials to be held digitally on the NFC band worn by the climber to track the route. With the Lizcore system, climbers who lack the necessary digital credentials will not be able to access automatic holds because the smart locking system will not release the harness/rope until the correct credentials are presented.
The system will also make use of cameras installed alongside Lizcore base units – the same devices used to track the route, display grades, etc. – with footage of the climber standing at the start of the route being analyzed using AI software to detect whether it has been properly clipped into the harness or not. No, for every door.
A second, upward-facing camera will be trained on the same route to detect if a climber is climbing without being restrained, triggering an alarm if so.
“Our main focus now is on this automation security device,” he said, noting that there are a number of deaths every year as a result of automation incidents. “The safety device is a complement to the (track) starter (device)… so we provide safety and (play).”
On the hardware side, he says Lizcore’s auto safety system is designed to work with many brands of automatons, including newer ones that have a retractable cord instead of a belt.
Getting the AI software right is another big focus for the team so that it can do a decent job of independently detecting when a climber is clipped correctly or when it isn’t.
“It will be a machine learning model that will be able to track the climber and determine whether they are completely safe or not. But the thing is that we do not expect that we will reach the level of 100% accuracy, we mean that we will provide different stages and different layers of safety,” Juan said. , referring to the credential element in the system as another element. Great piece of the puzzle.
“The demand (from gyms) is about safety right now,” he added. “We’re just creating the necessity, to some extent, (to digitize and gamify indoor climbing), but the real necessity is to avoid accidents because they’re a huge (risk) and there are people dying, and that’s crucial.”
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