New AR swim goggles unveiled by Recon Instruments creator
Digital compass and heart rate monitor are components of Form’s Smart Swim 2.
Former professional swimmer Dan Eisenhardt, co-founder of Recon Instruments in Vancouver, went back to his origins in 2016 when he founded Form, a wearables firm that sold goggles powered by augmented reality that were designed to improve swimmers.
Form has released the Smart Swim 2, the second iteration of its smart goggles, after four years of fine-tuning the design of its main product.
Using inbuilt sensors and Waveguide, an innovation that concentrates visual data into the swimmer’s eyes, the Smart Swim 2 glasses, similar to the previous model, provide athletes real-time instruction, supervised training sessions, and swimming parameters including stroke rate and speed.
The Vancouver-based business has improved the comfort and size of the goggles while also including new features and data into Smart Swim 2 with the goal of enhancing swimmers’ performance.
Eisenhardt, Form’s CEO, was a professional swimmer for fourteen years before to starting his first business in 2016. Recon Instruments, which Eisenhardt first established, introduced a line of smart eyewear for the sports industry in 2010 and was later purchased by Intel Corporation in 2015 for a sum of $175 million.
After Intel closed its Recon branch in 2017, the four founders of the firm decided to take on other endeavours. Eisenhardt started Form, and his other co-founders went on to build other digital firms in Vancouver, such Novarc Technologies, Thinkific, and SKIO Music.
Form began operations in August 2019 and completed a $12 million Series A financing in 2020, with unnamed family offices in Denmark and the UK leading the deal.
According to Eisenhardt, Recon Instruments showed what might be accomplished with augmented reality sports gadgets by providing the appropriate information in the appropriate manner at the appropriate moment.
He said that since swim goggles had a relatively little amount of space for features like sensors and displays, as well as the challenges of combining electronics and water, adhering to these principles became increasingly difficult with the debut of Form.
Eisenhardt said that in addition to overcoming these obstacles, they are also pleased with their upcoming product, which solidifies leadership in the market and offers swimmers a really appealing real-world use for augmented reality.
The tech pack of the Smart Swim 2 goggles, which has a barometer, magnetometer, gyroscope, and accelerometer, is 15% smaller than that of the original model. To accommodate a range of face shapes, the goggles also include nose bridges and eye seals.
The new goggles also include a digital compass called SwimStraight that enables swimmers to follow in-goggle directional heading to prevent swimming off course, in addition to heart rate monitoring detected at the temple.
Eisenhardt said in a statement that the integrated heart rate monitor eliminates the need to buy, connect, and pair a separate device and provides accurate continuous real-time heart rate for the best training and racing results.
Swimmers that like open water swimming are the target audience for SwimStraight. Eisenhardt pointed out that SwimStraight is especially life-changing for triathletes, providing a shrewd guidance to maintain a proper swim course while conserving power, enhancing concentration, and minimising waiting time.
Form claims that World Triathlon, USA Triathlon, the Professional Triathletes Organisation, along with supertri, have already approved the Smart Swim 2. Right now, the device costs $249 USD at retail.
A complimentary two-month trial of Form Premium, which gives users access to training programmes, routines, and Form’s digital coaching platform, HeadCoach, is included with the Smart Swim 2.
