Home Exercise How an Indian startup is using smartphone’s front camera to make fitness fun

How an Indian startup is using smartphone’s front camera to make fitness fun

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How an Indian startup is using smartphone’s front camera to make fitness fun

Two years in the past, when Anurag Mundhada and Jayesh Hannurkar, graduates from IIT-Bombay, have been combating weight points through the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, they considered bringing their experience in sensors and laptop imaginative and prescient to create an interactive house exercise platform.

“The largest downside assertion from a client viewpoint that we’re engaged on to unravel is motivation,” Mundhada defined the concept behind their Insane AI app. “Tremendous match fashions and trainers can typically actually flip off newcomers however should you make the preliminary onboarding clean and frictionless as potential, health might be enjoyable and is for everybody,” he mentioned.

Insane AI, which is at present in beta for properly over a yr and nears official launch quickly, is totally different from different health apps, declare the founders. In contrast to 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 completed in real-time, we run a video AI layer on prime of that which analyses the movement and clarifies which train is being performed, counts the reps, after which the system provides a rating of how intense the train is,” Mundhada advised indianexpress.com throughout a video name.

Anurag Mundhada (left) and Jayesh Hannurkar (proper) co-founded Insane AI in 2020.

“If you’re doing a squat and your hips are beneath your knees, you get a rating of 1 and if you’re simply doing very shallow reps, you’ll not get the identical quantity of rating,” he added. Mundhada claimed its AI-powered exercise monitoring expertise is 98 per cent correct based mostly on the corporate’s inside take a look at information.

The intention to make use of a smartphone as an integral a part of your health journey and create a brand new person expertise round telephone 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 expertise 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, alternatively, labored with a Bengaluru-based Axogyan AI the place he did a mission with Mercedes Benz for human sensing for autonomous automobiles.

Mundhada mentioned he and his crew have been fascinated by Nintendo Wii and Microsoft Kinect and needed to carry the power to trace physique movement utilizing a telephone digital camera. Though smartphones over time have gotten higher {hardware}, depth sensors nonetheless are restricted to a handful of pricy telephones. “Utilizing AI we enabled the traditional 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 further 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 might be created round house 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 expertise and exercise monitoring utilizing a telephone digital camera may very well be potential. It was a fundamental exercise app that garnered 2000 customers, largely associates and quick household of the co-founders. That gave Mundhada some confidence to transform the algorithms and person interface and excellent the physique movement monitoring expertise to create the Insane AI app in early 2021. This time, the crew labored with health trainers to create the app and meant a large person base.

Mundhada calls Insane AI a house exercise app with a “extremely gamified expertise.” The app, which might be downloaded from the Google Play Retailer and Apple App Retailer, at present requires folks 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 at present on the waitlist.

To make use of the app, one has to first arrange a cartoon(y) avatar which might be your digital id on the exercise platform. You’ll be able to simply place the telephone in entrance of you at a distance, begin exercising, and the digital camera then begins monitoring your physique movement through the exercise. Each exercise or train customers do might be counted and they’re going to get rewarded by cash which might be redeemed within the type of digital collectibles and coupons for which the startup has tied up with a couple of companions. Customers may problem their associates 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 bunch of options together with much more exercises and workout routines.

Mundhada calls Insane AI a house exercise app with a “extremely gamified expertise.”

The AI-powered exercise expertise mannequin developed by Mundhada and his crew not simply tracks physique factors but in addition tracks customers’ health ranges throughout 5 totally different dimensions resembling energy, cardio, higher physique, and decrease physique. Mundhada mentioned they’ve taken numerous enter from health specialists to develop the exercise plans and resolve on totally different health ranges, whereas the corporate’s in-house information science crew has labored on making a health mannequin which might be customised and personalised as per a person. The insane AI app provides 35 totally different workout routines and 150 exercises, out of which 4 exercises are free, to start with.


In line with Mundhada, Insane AI appears to be extensively 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. Nonetheless, energy customers spend virtually an hour on the platform.

“Insane AI shouldn’t be meant to exchange a private coach fully,” Mundhada mentioned, including the app is “designed to have a straightforward 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 might help you see you if you’re lifting weights.” Mundhada is evident that Insane AI goals to supply a rewarding and enjoyable expertise and complement your journey alongside the way in which.

The house exercise app comes with a promise of not amassing customers’ footage and movies however solely amassing 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 can let customers expertise the app at no cost, with sure options resembling superior challenges and redeeming rewards requiring a subscription. Proper now, those that sign-up for the app will rise up to 6 months of free subscription. Mundhada and the crew are but to determine what can be the price of a subscription.

Final yr, 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.

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