With the Houston Marathon only five months away, a new application using human motion insights could help a runner refine their form to reach peak performance – all from the convenience of their smart phone.
While traditional treadmills are limited in training feedback and wearables are not designed to track elevation, Houston-based AiKYNETIX uses real-time technology to provide a new option for runners on treadmills.
“Runners spend a lot of time, energy and money to run better,” says Denis Akhiyarov, CEO and co-founder. “In my personal life with training for nine marathons, I’ve seen limitations with wearables, they don’t actually track running form while running. Overall, our technology tracks not only your basic parameters but it can also analyze the human running form while in motion.”
AiKYNETIX, which was founded in January 2021, is positioned to replace power meters and can make a treadmill smarter. It has ability to plug into interactive video platforms for sports and serves as a much cheaper and more widely available analysis tool outside of motion capture labs, he says.
“Motion analysis is becoming important in sports,” says Akhiyarov, a data scientist who previously worked at Google as a developer in machine learning. “We want to make this expensive fitness technology available for everyone.”
The current target market for the technology is tech-savvy triathletes, however, there are wider applications for the technology including for coaches to get real-time performance metrics. Also, there are medical applications such as for rehabilitation and injury prevention.
“One of the discoveries for us is seeing differences between runners using different shoes,” says cofounder and Rice University MBA Anton Galvas. “It’s very interesting to see how much energy you preserve depending on what kind of shoe you wear.”
The team’s primary market for sale is the IOS app store but they plan to expand to fitness platforms for integration and have seen interest from treadmill companies for potential partnerships.
There are other current competitor solutions that require special hardware and wearables but set up can be cumbersome and if performed in a running lab, it can be very costly for the user. The AiKYNETIX platform is a downloadable app that has a $10 monthly subscription and can be set up with only a tripod.
Within six months of launching, the technology was being tested in a professional lab to track 360 different running conditions. AiKINETIX is a finalist of CodeLaunch accelerator and has moved into phase 1 with America’s Seed Fund powered by the National Science Foundation.
AiKYNETIX has experts and consultants with experience at NASA, Major League Baseball, and European Soccer League.
The AiKYNETIX team is raising seed funding to help to accelerate the development of the app to go to a wider market. The team will also host a showcase of the technology at the grand opening of the fitness center at The Ion this month.
EDP Renewables, whose North American division is based in Houston, has launched the second module of its Energy Starter 2022 program.
EDP Renewables launched the first module in May; it dealt with the future of energy distribution. Applications for startups seeking to join the second module are being accepted until September 30. The second module focuses on innovations in renewable energy and green hydrogen.
Next year, the third and final modules will focus on decarbonization.
Companies selected for the second module will attend a bootcamp in Houston where they, in partnership with EDP Renewables experts, will develop their ideas and work on pilot projects. After the current four-phase edition of the program ends, startups will be able to test their innovations in the U.S., Brazil, Portugal, or Spain.
During the six editions of Energy Starter, the more than 150 participating startups have sealed over 80 deals, including equity investments and pilot projects. The most recent edition of Energy Starter attracted over 700 applicants.
Earlier this year, EDP Ventures, the venture capital arm of EDP Renewables North America’s parent company, pledged to double its investments in startups pursuing energy transition technology and services.
EDP Ventures says its VC commitment is climbing from 45 million euros (about $45 million) already invested in the past decade to a total of 100 million euros by 2025. EDP Ventures plans to allocate as much as 10 million euros per startup.
“As the electricity sector moves at unprecedented speed, we want to work with the most promising startups, with a clear focus on projects that represent growth opportunities. The coming years will be challenging for the energy transition, and we want to face them with the best ideas on a global level,” says Ana Paula Marques, CEO of EDP Spain, a subsidiary of Lisbon, Portugal-based energy company EDP Group.
Houston-based EDP Renewables North America is part of Madrid, Spain-based EDP Renewables, the world’s fourth largest producer of renewable energy. It’s investing 1 billion euros in innovation efforts by 2025. EDP Group is the majority shareholder of EDP Renewables.
The Houston division builds, owns, and operates wind farms and solar parks throughout North America. EDP Renewables North America oversees 58 wind farms and nine solar parks.
Among the nine solar parks is the $280 million, 240-megawatt Cattlemen Solar Park in Milam County, between the Austin metro area and Bryan-College Station. The park is scheduled to start generating electricity next year. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, recently signed a long-term, 156-megawatt power deal with EDP Renewables North America.