FORM Smart Swim 2 goggles were released earlier this year—you can read my review here. They are smart because a tiny-but-bright heads-up display in the right lens shares data in real time. While the Olympics and Paralympics are keeping sport front of our minds, I talked to CEO Dan Eisenhardt about the future of smart fitness devices,
Eisenhardt is originally from Denmark, with a background in mechanical engineering and entrepreneurship. FORM was born out of a long-standing interest in integrating AR technology into swimming goggles.
The current goggles are light, good-looking and effective, whether you want real-time reassurance of how your heart rate is doing as you exert yourself or the added benefit of SwimStraight: an in-goggle compass to help efficiency in open water.
“It’s been a long journey developing this category and I’ve always been a proponent of knowing there is value of putting information there, close to your eyes. There’s always a trade-off. When you’re talking AR you’re talking about occupying the most precious real estate: your eyeballs and your face. And people are very particular about what they put on their face. That’s why we have eyewear companies charging high prices for a pair of glasses: it’s a deeply personal decision, not just from an economic standpoint but an identity standpoint, a style standpoint. There are also trade-offs in terms of weight, looks, how it feels on your face, how it weighs down when you’re sweating and so on. You have to get to no-compromise, or very-low-compromise, cases that can give you real-time information in a product that looks right, weighs right and is affordable.”
So, how do the products now compare to the original goals, I wonder? “We set out thinking about how to solve this problem for swimmers where your arms are moving, where the clock on the pool deck is something you can’t see while you’re swimming and you need to just know at the simplest level what the time is, when you can start on your next interval and so on. We began by wanting to put the information in digestible form inside the goggles, so you get the benefits of knowing while you’re swimming instead of only when you’re resting. The second piece was we wanted to get those training plans you’d find on an indoor bike, for instance, the guidance, into the goggles as well. It was too big for the first version. The third part was the Holy Grail, the underwater coach, to teach swimming—it’s so damn hard to swim.”
Eisenhardt found that when the company developed HeadCoach, the company’s name for its system of providing metrics, feedback and educational tools in the goggles, the arrival of AI and machine learning helped add extra capabilities. “With AI, it’s really allowed us to to do a lot more without having to millions of lines of code for each unique case.”
Is there value in adding more sensors and features to the goggles?
Eisenhardt is careful in his answer. “Adding more sensors and features must be carefully considered to avoid diminishing the overall value of the product. Additional sensors can add to the cost, reduce battery life, and increase weight and bulk.”
The current model is light and efficient, building a heart rate sensor, reading data from the wearer’s temple, where the previous version required an external sensor to achieve this. “The latest release is smaller, more aerodynamic and we want ot continue to move our products in that direction so you don’t have to ask if someone’s wearing smart goggles, because they’ll all be smart.”
And so where does that mean FORM is heading: what exactly will be in future versions? After all, swimming is one of the biggest sports in the world and is a life skill, making it a large potential market. “We will continue to focus on swimming and aim to make the experience more personalized and less complex through AI and machine learning. The goal is to create a deeply personalized experience that grows with the user’s progress as a swimmer.”
