(Courtesy of Pivot)
Pivot Yoga is attempting to bring yoga studios into people’s homes through artificial intelligence and motion sensor technology. After three years of development, Pivot Yoga announced today that its system is now available for pre-order to residents in the U.S. and Canada.
The system comes with a pair of yoga pants and a shirt developed by Pivot. The clothing is embedded with 16 sensors (nine in the shirt, seven in the pants) that are each the size of a dime. The sensors can track a user’s movements, comparing them to yoga positions to determine whether each move is being performed correctly through the Pivot mobile app. The intelligence behind Pivot was developed by motion technology firm TuringSense.
“We’re excited for yogis all over North America,” said Joe Chamdani, CEO & Co-Founder of TuringSense, in a press release. “We know how hard it is to learn yoga, how much yogis want to improve, and how many yogis want to practice at home. Solving these problems has required putting million-dollar technology into the hands of a yogi for less than the cost of a few classes.”
Users can select different yoga classes from world-class teachers that stream through their phone, computer, or television. Once an instructor appears on screen, Pivot inserts a live avatar of the user’s body onto the video so a user can see the real-time movement of their body alongside their instructor. A user can ask “How’s this look?” and the teacher will respond with how to correctly adjust the pose.
A pair of pants and shirt from Pivot costs $99 to pre-order, but a content subscription charge of $19 per month is also needed to access the online classes. The free mobile app can be downloaded from the App Store, and an Android version is expected to launch at a later date.
“Our vision is really big. It’s not just to be the Netflix or Peloton of yoga—we want to build a whole new, interactive, and completely customized way to learn and practice,” Chamdani added.
