Indoor climbing is a difficult sport to track. That's why Spanish startup Lizcore caught the eye of TechCrunch at MWC earlier this year. The team of two co-founders, led by CEO Edgar Casanovas Lorente, a climbing instructor and guide turned entrepreneur, is building on the social gamification that climbing gyms already enjoy in all kinds of other sports. They were showing off hardware that they hope will be a precursor to the future. The rise of wearables and activity tracking apps.
The system devised by Lizcore only requires climbers to wear a lightweight cloth NFC bracelet to track their sport. This means you don't have to climb with your phone or other bulky devices. This bracelet works in conjunction with your smart base unit and top out hold to give you route stats and the ability to track your progress in the Lizcore app.
A few months later, the startup has raised a pre-seed funding round to commercialize its hardware. The team has so far raised a total of 600,000 euros (approximately $630,000 at current exchange rates). The funding comes from several investors and business angels, including Startup Wise Guys, individual and corporate supporters in the sector, as well as significant state support (in the form of a €200,000 interest-free loan and some grants). Provided. .
They recently signed on with their first local customer, a climbing gym called Drac de Pedra in Ruby, Catalonia, where they held a demo event for their route tracking technology earlier this month. “They want a full installation, but they start with 30 routes, or 10 devices,” co-founder and CTO Marçal Juan told TechCrunch.
While the digitalization of indoor climbing remains at the heart of Rizcor's pitch (lol), the team's top priority is finalizing the automatic belay safety equipment. Juan says he hopes to have this completed within six to 12 months. However, when TechCrunch repeated his “Hardware is hard” mantra, he laughed knowingly (“Yes, it's really hard!”) and acknowledged that they also have some challenges. We are also working on resolving reliability issues with route tracking kits.
Lizcore's original team of two co-founders has grown to nine people as they expand their efforts to introduce the system, improve the hardware, and get more gyms interested in purchasing. did.
NFC + AI = Improved autobelay safety
For those who aren't mountaineers, an autobelay is a device Jim can install at the top of a high-altitude climbing route, allowing climbers to climb without having someone else belay them. These machines include retractable webbing attached to a carabiner, which the climber must clip to their harness before safely climbing.
This system is very safe if used correctly. However, there have been instances where climbers have forgotten to clip onto the automatic belay before climbing, leading to tragic crashes.
Clipping the carabiner to the wrong part of the harness is also a big risk. Gyms also usually require climbers to obtain a certificate (usually in the form of a card attached to the harness) to certify that they are fully equipped with all of the autobelay's safety features before they can use them. You will be asked for it. However, to police this, there must be staff on hand to continually check that each climber has the necessary qualifications. Often that doesn't happen. Therefore, there is a perpetual risk in climbing gyms that someone who doesn't know how to use this equipment properly can get into trouble.
Rizcor believes they have come up with a clever way to improve autobelay safety and help gyms reduce all of these safety risks (and their own legal liability). First, it allows climbers to hold their credentials digitally on the NFC bands they wear for route tracking. Using Lizcore's system, the smart lock system will not release the webbing/rope until the correct credentials are presented, preventing climbers without the necessary digital credentials from accessing the autobelay.
Climbing route with autobelay with lizcore's safety system prototype (Image source: Lizcore)
The system also utilizes cameras installed in conjunction with a Lizcore base unit (the same hardware used to track routes, display grades, etc.). AI software analyzes footage of climbers standing at the start of the route to see if they are correctly clipped into their harness, according to Huang.
A second camera facing upwards into the route itself is trained to detect if a climber is climbing without getting pinched, and triggers an alarm if they are.
“Our main focus right now is on this auto-belay safety device,” he said, noting that auto-belay accidents cause a large number of deaths each year. “Security devices are [route tracking] Grader start [hardware]…so we provide security, [gamification]”
On the hardware side, he says Lizcore's autobelay safety system is designed to work with a variety of brands of autobelay machines, including newer devices with retractable ropes rather than webbing.
Getting the AI software to work properly is also a big focus for the team, so it can do a good job of autonomously detecting if a climber is clipping in properly, or maybe not.
“The onboard machine learning models will be able to track climbers and determine whether they are completely safe. But importantly, we do not expect to reach a 100% level of accuracy; “It's about providing multiple stages and different layers of security,” Huang said, pointing to the system's authentication factor as another factor. A big piece of the puzzle.
“Demand is [from gyms] We are safe now,” he added. “In a way, we are just creating a need. [for digitizing and gamifying indoor climbing]But what we really need is to avoid accidents. Because accidents are huge. [risk]And some people are dying, and it's a critical situation. ”