Two years in the past, when Anurag Mundhada and Jayesh Hannurkar, graduates from IIT-Bombay, had been fighting weight points in the course of the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, they considered bringing their experience in sensors and pc imaginative and prescient to create an interactive residence exercise platform.
“The largest downside assertion from a shopper standpoint that we’re engaged on to unravel is motivation,” Mundhada defined the thought behind their Insane AI app. “Tremendous match fashions and trainers can typically actually flip off freshmen however in case you make the preliminary onboarding easy and frictionless as doable, health could be enjoyable and is for everybody,” he mentioned.
Insane AI, which is presently in beta for effectively over a 12 months and nears official launch quickly, is completely different from different health apps, declare the founders. Not like Apple Health Plus or Nike Coaching Membership, Insane AI makes use of your smartphone’s entrance digital camera to trace your movement throughout a exercise, they mentioned.
“The digital camera tracks the physique and divides it into 21 factors: your shoulders, elbows, ankles, and knees. As soon as the monitoring of factors is finished in real-time, we run a video AI layer on prime of that which analyses the movement and clarifies which train is being finished, counts the reps, after which the system provides a rating of how intense the train is,” Mundhada informed indianexpress.com throughout a video name.
Anurag Mundhada (left) and Jayesh Hannurkar (proper) co-founded Insane AI in 2020.
“In case you are doing a squat and your hips are under your knees, you get a rating of 1 and in case you are simply doing very shallow reps, you’ll not get the identical quantity of rating,” he added. Mundhada claimed its AI-powered exercise monitoring know-how is 98 per cent correct based mostly on the corporate’s inside check information.
The intention to make use of a smartphone as an integral a part of your health journey and create a brand new consumer expertise round cellphone cameras comes from Mundhada and Jayesh’s earlier expertise in digital camera sensing applied sciences. Jayesh was with Sony Japan earlier than co-founding Insane AI and labored on LiDAR sensors, a know-how that provides depth scanning for higher pictures and AR in smartphones and is predominantly present in Apple’s high-end iPhones and iPad Execs since 2020. Mundhada, then again, labored with a Bengaluru-based Axogyan AI the place he did a mission with Mercedes Benz for human sensing for autonomous autos.
Mundhada mentioned he and his workforce had been fascinated by Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect and needed to carry the power to trace physique movement utilizing a cellphone digital camera. Though smartphones through the years have gotten higher {hardware}, depth sensors nonetheless are restricted to a handful of costly telephones. “Utilizing AI we enabled the conventional RGB digital camera to trace real-time exercise monitoring which is current on all telephones to do what Nintendo Wii or Xbox Kinect can do,” he mentioned when requested how a smartphone digital camera can monitor physique movement with no extra sensors.
The Insane AI app makes use of your smartphone’s front-facing digital camera to trace your physique movement.
To check whether or not the smartphone digital camera actually tracks physique movement and whether or not an app could be created round residence exercises, Mundhada developed Pushup dojo which went stay within the early days of the pandemic. The app was used as a proof of idea to reveal that know-how and exercise monitoring utilizing a cellphone digital camera could possibly be doable. It was a primary exercise app that garnered 2000 customers, largely pals and rapid household of the co-founders. That gave Mundhada some confidence to transform the algorithms and consumer interface and excellent the physique movement monitoring know-how to create the Insane AI app in early 2021. This time, the workforce labored with health trainers to create the app and meant a large consumer base.
Mundhada calls Insane AI a house exercise app with a “extremely gamified expertise.” The app, which could be downloaded from the Google Play Retailer and Apple App Retailer, presently requires individuals to sign-up for the waitlist, and starting the final week of October, Insane AI will turn out to be accessible to those that are presently on the waitlist.
To make use of the app, one has to first arrange a cartoon(y) avatar which can be your digital identification on the exercise platform. You’ll be able to simply place the cellphone in entrance of you at a distance, begin exercising, and the digital camera then begins monitoring your physique movement in the course of the exercise. Each exercise or train customers do can be counted and they’ll get rewarded by means of cash which could be redeemed within the type of digital collectibles and coupons for which the startup has tied up with just a few companions. Customers may problem their pals each in real-time in addition to turn-based health battles. The Insane AI app works on any smartphone that has been launched in 2016 and after. Within the coming days, customers will see a brand-new interface and a number of options together with much more exercises and workouts.
Mundhada calls Insane AI a house exercise app with a “extremely gamified expertise.”
The AI-powered exercise know-how mannequin developed by Mundhada and his workforce not simply tracks physique factors but in addition tracks customers’ health ranges throughout 5 completely different dimensions resembling power, cardio, higher physique, and decrease physique. Mundhada mentioned they’ve taken a number of enter from health specialists to develop the exercise plans and determine on completely different health ranges, whereas the corporate’s in-house information science workforce has labored on making a health mannequin which could be customised and personalised as per a consumer. The insane AI app presents 35 completely different workouts and 150 exercises, out of which 4 exercises are free, to start with.
In keeping with Mundhada, Insane AI appears to be broadly used at 7:30 am and one other peak comes within the night, round 6 pm. On common, customers spend 9 minutes on the app, up from 5 minutes within the early days of Insane AI. Nevertheless, energy customers spend virtually an hour on the platform.
“Insane AI just isn’t meant to exchange a private coach utterly,” Mundhada mentioned, including the app is “designed to have a simple pathway to studying health and getting extra superior.” “For circumstances resembling excessive weight problems, it’s at all times advisable to have a human within the loop and that’s not only for studying but in addition for the prevention of accidents somebody who will help you see you whenever you’re lifting weights.” Mundhada is evident that Insane AI goals to offer a rewarding and enjoyable expertise and complement your journey alongside the way in which.
The house exercise app comes with a promise of not accumulating customers’ footage and movies however solely accumulating anonymised information of movement itself to enhance the AI engine which does the movement monitoring.
For monetisation, Mundhada says they’re going for a freemium mannequin that may let customers expertise the app free of charge, with sure options resembling superior challenges and redeeming rewards requiring a subscription. Proper now, those that sign-up for the app will stand up to 6 months of free subscription. Mundhada and the workforce are but to determine what can be the price of a subscription.
Final 12 months, the start-up raised $900,000 in seed funding. The spherical was led by early-stage enterprise capital fund pi Ventures, Anupam Mittal, Sameer Pitalwalla, and different angels in sports activities, health, and tech. In the long term, Mundhada needs to show Insane AI right into a health metaverse and work on constructing a basis for an immersive world that has already been began.
