Automatic and Objective Ski Testing
In the framework of the EPFL MGT-555 (Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Engineering) course, a group of 6 students developed a novel device for improved ski testing. In only 14 weeks they interviewed selected customers and defined the product requirements based on their feedback, then designed and developed a prototype and finally tested it in-field. Watch the video below for a demo.
Their ski & snow scanner measures snow and air temperature and the liquid water content of the snow. It was specially designed to work in cold weather and can be used while wearing gloves. A scan function further allows to identify an RFID-tag attached to the skis to record which ski was used when.
At the same time the Naos sensors continuously records the skier's movement and automatically detects each run. For each run, the webapp extracts maximum speed, accelerations and computes a set of split times such as how much time elapsed until reaching a certain speed or crossing a certain point.
All this data allows to attribute an objective score to each ski, thus facilitating the selection of the fastest skis. It further helps to understand and build statistics about which type of ski flex, base structure, and wax works best for what type of snow, terrain, and speeds.
Big thanks go to the students: Germain Meyer, Antoine Lacroix, Nathan Soury-Lavergne, Lucas Pollet-Villard, Léa Pradel, Haitao Zhou, the course staff: Philipp Schneider, Prof. Thomas Weber, Prof. Veronique Michaud, and Pascal Vuilliomenet for selecting Archinisis as participating company for this year.