Competitive athletes are always looking for ways to be faster and perform better. Competitive Kayakers are no different. POC Streamline is a mixed reality helmet and smart paddle that offers new fitness tracking and training programs to paddle sports athletes. Mixed reality training exercises like obstacle courses provide kayakers ways to fine tune their line down a complex river course. Cadence, MPH and technique analysis further assist paddlers to improve their performance.

The main objective of the project was to expand the POC helmet brand and open up new customer segments while staying focused on the highly technical and premium quality helmets POC deliveries. It was also important to follow POC’s current design language to mesh into the current product line. This new product would push the limits of helmet technology and other visualization technologies and position POC as a leader in smart helmet technology and design.

Competitive paddle sports athletes face challenges when training for slalom or gated events because of the difficulty in setting up gated training in steep or extreme terrain, near dangerous rapids, and securing ropes on two different sides of a swift-moving river to hang gates. It is time and labor intensive and often these courses are temporary and will need to be taken down immediately. Permits are also needed to set up these courses.

Using GPS tracking, gyroscopes, and a new mixed reality interface would allow athletes to set up training courses from the riverbank and track their results each run down the course. These digital obstacles are displayed in a mixed reality helmet to provide a new training platform for paddlers. The batteries and computer are built into the helmet around the bottom rim for power access and paddler balance.

The Streamline App lets you look back at your training and check your fitness goals, technique, intensity, and distance. The mobile application lets you set new goals and share your results with friends. Nobody wants to put a wet helmet back on to review their results.

POC has built an amazing high-end helmet brand. They have provided the cycling industry with head and body protection. They are very well known in the action sports industry as having well-designed products. By working in a new adjacent market with new training products and protection products they can expand sales while experimenting with new technologies in their product line outside their normal market. This gives them room to try new innovative things.

POC streamline helps them explore new technologies and advance their normal product line. POC can produce other products that sync to their new mixed reality helmets like paddles or paddle attachments. New digital content can be created to gamify training and provide new forms of competition using this technology. Current POC protection products could be adapted for paddle sports with minimal product design changes. The mixed reality helmet, paddle accessories, new digital content and new competitive circuits, cross-market product sales are all new forms of revenue for POC sports.