Climb Beyond: The future of indoor climbing

Table of Contents

1. Description of the product

2. Market need

3. Description of specific characteristics
Body and movement tracking
Body projection
Usage and control
Network connection

4. Competition
Competition in the indoor climbing market
Technological competition

5. Unique selling proposition

6. Assessment of opportunity
Private expenditures for leisure and fun
Sports
Indoor climbing facilities
Capital concerns
Entrepreneurial self-assessment
Entrepreneurial team

7. Steps to a viable venture

8. Summary

9. Resources

1. Description of the product

“Climb Beyond” is a summary for full featured service in the indoor climbing market with the goal to make this sport more attractive and enjoyable to everyone. The key product is a device that can observe any climbing route and track a climber on it. This tracking information can be re-projected by a laser beam onto the climbing wall enabling any inexperienced climber to get immediate help while being stuck on the wall. The information can also be used for later analyzing and teaching. Once installed, this product will enable visitors to get a much better climbing experience and advance further more easily.

2. Market need

Indoor climbing is a fun sport for urbanized people with a highly increasing market. Most climbing facilities are located in short distance of people’s home and reachable without long traveling. Neither special background knowledge nor special physical condition is needed to just start climbing. It perfectly fits the trend of adrenalin sports where people who are stressed by daily life just want to cross the physical borders of what they are capable of. Climbing forces you to face your fear of height, your fear of falling and your fear of being secured by a thin line that is hold by second person that you have to trust. But it gives you the joy of succeeding, of reaching the top, of learning new moves, of trying more difficult routes and being better than others. The combination of these extremes makes this sport so attractive to many people.

As shown in the following figure^[1], climbing requires technical, physical and mental strength equally. That is one of the keys why this sport is so attractive to many people. Nevertheless most climbers fail to advance in at least one of these fields. Therefore “Climb Beyond” will help user to learn technical issues faster and feel mentally more secure.

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The climbing market itself is divided into indoor and outdoor while indoor is the most attractive part for urbanized people. Furthermore the indoor market is divided into bouldering and rope climbing. “To boulder” means climbing on walls of smaller height without being secured and without any further technical equipment. “Rope climbing” allows people to climb up to a typical height of 8 to 24 meters being secured by a thin line that is held by a second person standing on the bottom. This requires specific knowledge about securing, using ropes and knots and using further optional technical security equipment. Even though rope climbing is more complicated, it is the more attractive part because if contains all the fear and joy listed above.

Many climbing instruction courses focus on rope climbing and the security issues that come along with it. Courses and prices vary on the level of difficulty and how advanced the participants are. For instructors it is a challenge to teach every single participant separately or to even show them their own capabilities.

The indoor climbing market exploded from the late 1980’s to the beginning of the new millennium. Western countries like the US, UK and Germany entered a saturation phase. For the companies that operate indoor climbing facilities it gets more and more difficult to have something new exciting for the active climbers and during summer period it is even more difficult to even fill the facility with visitors [BMC03].

“Climb Beyond” addresses all these issues. It helps instructors to discuss with the participants. It allows less experienced climbers to feel more secure on the wall where they are usually lost and afraid of height whenever they do not know how to continue. And it enables operators of indoor climbing facilities making their service more attractive.

3. Description of specific characteristics

“Climb Beyond” combines state-of-the art technology to give users the real climbing experience. It helps people to enjoy climbing and facing their fear. It helps them to advance faster while saving money on instruction courses because they might not need the advanced courses anymore. Without our service, anyone who starts climbing will experience kind of a logarithmic learning curve.^[2] But for urbanized people a faster increase is of high interest. Therefore our service will increase the learning curve much faster in no time.

The service is easy to use, available all the time and does not cost tons of money. Extended services for accessing the tracked data allow anyone to review their own capabilities even at home. Because all the technology is put into a single small device, we can enhance any existing climbing facility by just installing the device and calibrating it to environmental conditions (point of view, light and shadow). There is no need to change anything else in the facility itself. Just the device and an Internet connection is required.

Body and movement tracking

Body recognition is a huge topic in the gaming industry. Devices like Nintendo® Wii™ and Sony® Eye-Toy™ allow players to use their body to interact freely with the game. But the real break-through was done by Microsoft® with Kinect™ for XBox360™ because it really tracks one to 4 bodies (including skeleton data) at the same time and no additional technical equipment has to be held by the player. Kinect™ is the first device that has a computing power that is high enough and a latency low enough to give the player a smooth feeling of real interaction. Ten years ago this would have been like magic but nowadays every teenager knows about that topic and feels comfortable using this technology.

These technologies are of interest for indoor climbing because they allow detailed tracking of a human body. Within indoor climbing any device that does not need to be worn on the body has a clear advantage. Therefore only Microsoft® Kinect™ is of interest. But so far Microsoft® did not publish any commercial license and the device only works up to a distance of 3.5 meters. Typically distances in indoor climbing facilities are 3 to 10 meters. This is why a different method of using two cameras in a stereoscopic mode will be used. Tracking data includes:

- Video recording for later playback and teaching
- Distance information for terrain recognition and determining the distance of the climber between the camera device and to climbing wall
- Shape recognition of any human body for compressed data storage and laser re-projection
The advantages of these tracking methods are:
- re-usage of existing technology: Stereoscopic or cameras with depth/distance recognition are on the market
- re-usage of existing algorithms from the scientific field of computer graphics
- full body recognition: a complete human body is tracked and not only hands or feet
- no additional equipment:
- people do not need to buy any new equipment
- people do not need to wear anything on your body
- no markers to put on hands (as used in motion capturing in film industry)

Body projection

The tracked data can easily be used for later review or teaching but the real advantage is the re-projection of the already tracked data of a professional climber onto the climbing wall to help any less experienced climber to advance and feel more secure. Projection can be done while climbing so that the next move from the current position is projected or to allow a step-by-step view to learn about the route while still standing on the ground.

The projection must be easy to see, bright enough and easy to understand. Indoor climbing walls are usually colored in white or light grey. Furthermore the environment is fully lightened by powerful lamps form opposite walls or ceiling. Therefore “Climb Beyond” introduces monochrome laser beam projection that everybody knows from laser show or laser pointer devices. The purposes are:

- mature and inexpensive technology
- security issues of laser beams are well known and easy to handle
- perfect contrast and brightness even under very bright environmental conditions
- low maintenance costs, low energy consumption and long life time
- compact design

A sample application how body tracking and shape projection might look like has been implemented within 5 hours using the freely available non-commercial version of Microsoft® Kinect™ Software Development Kit.^[3] The sample shown in the upper left quad indicates how the black line following the shape of the body can be used for projection.

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A sample graphic showing the different steps and shapes of climbing moves illustrates the recording and projection.

A sample graphic with the overlay of the different steps and shapes of climbing moves illustrates the purpose of recording and projection.

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Usage and control

The device will be installed opposite of the climbing wall to get a good field of view so that a human body can be tracked easily and re-projection can be done without interfering others. There are only two modes to control - recording and projection. For both of them any user just needs to select a route that he or she wants to climb up. These routes are usually marked by handles of different colors and they are usually numbered or named by funny names. Therefore routes can easily be identified and chosen from a list or from an image of the wall showing all available routes. Controlling can be done by a simple remote control device or a touch panel. A touch panel allows easy selection of routes and displaying further information about difficulty or other special hints. Remote access from home or during teaching can be done by network connection or hosting a website or online community.

Network connection

Because the device is a complete package of body tracking and laser based re-projection, it can easily be installed. It comes with a embedded computer system including a network connection. This enables “Climb Beyond” to offer full featured services around indoor climbing. This includes:

- remote upgrade of service that are installed in the device
- remote maintenance
- remote access to recorded tracking data (for review and teaching)
- inter-connecting multiple facilities of the same operating company
- building an online community
- online teaching and learning
- optional cloud services to store and access data

4. Competition

Competition in the indoor climbing market

This application has wide spread competition. Any new service in the indoor climbing market is seen as direct competition. During the past 20 years indoor climbing facilities increased their size and numbers routes to attract more customers. But there is no high-tech equipment used. Most instruction courses are discussed directly during the lesson and while climbing. Sometimes mobile digital cameras are used to record a climber as a video clip and a regular video projection device is used for later discussion. This is also recording and re-projection but based on old technology without any interaction and it is not accessible to climbers when the instruction course has finished.

Technological competition

Other competition is seen in technology. There are companies that deal with cameras that allow depth recognition and there are companies dealing with laser projectors. But all of them are currently not active in the indoor climbing market. Camera manufacturers are only resellers mostly to the security and surveillance market. And laser technology is used in show effects or in high-end and expensive industrial or architectural applications.

Microsoft® Kinect™ for XBox360™ is the strongest competition in technology because it is very accurate in body and depth recognition and the reselling price (€ 140) is very low compared to the industry (€ 700 to € 10.000). Currently Microsoft® allows Kinect™ to be used in private or prototype applications but still there is no commercial licensing available. Furthermore the scanning distance ends at 3.5 meters which is too short for indoor applications. If Microsoft manages to increase this distance and offers a commercial license, Kinect™ might be used by “Climb Beyond”.

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^[1] [Hoerst03]; Figure 1.1; page 5

^[2] [Hoerst03]; Figure 1.5; page 10

^[3] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/Kinect™forwindows/download/