The Olympics is all about pushing the frontiers of human performance. As some athletes prepared for the Paris 2024 games, that included using a new technology developed at MIT.nano.
The technology was created by Striv (pronounced “strive”), a startup whose founder gained access to the cutting-edge labs and fabrication equipment at MIT.nano as part of the START.nano accelerator program. Striv’s tactile sensing technology fits into the inserts of shoes and, when combined with algorithms that crunch that tactile data, can precisely track force, movement, and form. Runners including USA marathoner Clayton Young, Jamaican track and field Olympian Damar Forbes, and former Olympic marathoner Jake Riley have tried Striv’s device.
“I’m excited about the potential of Striv’s technology,” Riley says. “It’s on a good path to revolutionize how we train and prevent injuries. After testing the sensors and seeing the data firsthand, I’m convinced of its value.”
For Striv founder Axl Chen, the 2024 games are the perfect opportunity to show that the product can help athletes at the highest level. But Chen also believes their product can help many non-Olympians.
“We think the Paris 2024 Olympics will be a really interesting opportunity for us to test the product with the athletes training for it,” Chen says. “After that, we’ll offer this to the general public to help everyone get the same kind of support and coaching advice as professional athletes.”
Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes
Chen was working in a robotics lab at Tsinghua University in China when he began using tactile sensors. Over the next two years, he experimented with ways to make the sensors more flexible and cost-effective.
“I think a lot of people have already explored vision and language, but tactile sensing as a way of perceiving the world seemed more open to me,” Chen says. “I thought tactile sensors and AI could make for powerful new products.”
The first space Striv entered was virtual reality (VR) gaming. The company created a shoe with embedded sensors that could capture users’ body motions in real-time by combining the sensor data with regular VR hand controllers. Striv even sold about 300 pairs of its shoes to interested customers around the world.
Striv has also gotten interest from companies in the medical, robotics, and automotive fields, which was both a blessing and a curse because of the need for startups to focus on one specific customer early on.
Chen says getting into the START.nano program in 2023 was an inflection point for the company.
“I pretty much didn’t apply to anything else,” Chen says. “I’m really interested in this technology, and I knew if I could do research at MIT, it would be really helpful to push this technology forward.”
Since then, Chen has leveraged MIT’s advanced nanofabrication equipment, laboratories, and expertise to iterate on different designs and build prototypes. That has included working in MIT.nano’s Immersion Lab, which features precise motion capture devices and other sensing technologies, like VO2 intake measurements and details force analysis of runners’ steps on a treadmill.
Striv’s team has also received support from the MIT Venture Mentoring Service (VMS) and is part of the MIT Industrial Liaison Program’s Startup Exchange program, which has helped the team hone in on athletes as the beachhead market for their technology.
“It’s remarkable that MIT is supporting us so much,” Chen says. “We often get asked why they’re doing this [for non-students], and we say MIT is committed to pushing technology forward.”
Striv’s sensing solution is made up of two layers of flexible electrodes with a material in between that can create different electrical characteristics corresponding to the force it comes under. That material has been at the heart of Chen’s research at MIT.nano: He’s trying to make it more durable and precise by adding nanostructures and making other tweaks.
Striv is also developing AI algorithms that use the sensor data to infer full body motion.
“We can quantify the force they apply to the ground and the efficiency of their movements,” Chen explains. “We can see if they’re leaning too far forward, or their knees are too high. That can be really useful in determining if they’re improving or not.”
Technology for the masses
As soon as Chen began interviewing runners, he knew Striv could help them.
“The alternatives for athletes are either to go to a really expensive biomechanics lab or use a wearable that’s able to track your heart rate but doesn’t give insights into your performance,” Chen explains. “For example, if you’re running, how is your form? How can you improve it? Runners are really interested in their form. They care about how high their knees go, how high they’re jumping, how much force they’re putting into the ground.”
Striv has tested its product with around 50 professional athletes to date and worked with Young in the leadup to the Olympics. Chen also has an eye on helping more casual runners.
“We also want to bring this to serious runners that aren’t professional,” Chen says. “I know a lot of people in Boston who run every day. That’s where this will go next.”
As the company grows and collects more data, Chen believes Striv will be able to provide personalized plans for improving performance and avoiding injuries across a range of different activities.
“We talk to a lot of coaches, and we think there’s potential to bring this to a lot of different sports,” Chen says. “Golfers, hikers, tennis players, cyclists, ski and snowboarders. We think this could be really useful for all of them.”