The startup of the Haute Savoie Department in France won the prize of the “Young creator engineer” for their smart ski airbag system, which has demonstrated its worth in the protection of professional ski cross athletes. The process is now moving from prototype to large-scale production.

Rémi Thomas, Valentin Honoré and Pierre-François Tissot are convinced that their technology can revolutionise protection systems. The Swedish brand POC, world leader in ski and bicycles helmets decided to follow them by integrating their smart airbag in their skiing jackets.   POC Proto was presented at Ispo (international company for prosthetics and orthotics devices ) in February and created a buzz, thereby strengthening the conviction of the two laureates accompanied by THESAME who won the prize of the “young creator engineer” 2015 from the Foundation Norbert Ségard. 

The system is approved by the International Ski Federation since October 2014 and has been widely tested by ski cross athletes. Hence they created created In & motion by the end of 2014.  « We develop this system in order to industrialise it for new markets. The product was developed on a niche market, namely ski cross, where accidents are extreme “explains Rémi Thomas, General Manager of In & motion.

Their technology includes a dozen of integrated sensors that measure movements in real time, enabling the release of the protection in less than 1000 milliseconds and which make the distinction between an unrecoverable imbalance and a simple jump...   «The system can even be re-used after the release, thanks to an on-board gas generator », states Rémi Thomas. Their objective is now to produce at large scale and use it also for alpine ski competitions.

See related article in French Newspaper Le Dauphine.