Irish tech company MoveAhead has signed a deal with confectionery brand Kinder to integrate technology aimed at getting children more active into the company’s digital products.
Founded by Dr Johann Issartel and Dr Jamie McGann, MoveAhead has developed a movement analytics platform that allows companies operating in the kids app space to bring movement elements into their digital products.
It provides feedback in a gamified way and acts as a model to help children improve their skills incrementally.
The deal with Kinder sees the MoveAhead technology included in the new release of Kinder’s Applaydu app, through the Joy of Moving experience.
The app accompanies the Kinder egg, which currently has annual sales of about 3.5 billion and brings “massive reach” for the technology, Dr McGann said.
Established in 2020, MoveAhead originally began in Dublin City University in response to what the founders describe as a “movement crisis” among children.
“Research shows that the majority of children can no longer hop, skip or even run properly. They spend an average of six hours a day engaged with screens, favouring the PlayStation over traditional playground activities,” said Dr Issartel.
This has led to fewer children taking part in sports and other activities, or dropping out earlier than they would have in the past.
MoveAhead’s platform is designed to “meet children where they are”, with partners that include Decathlon, Gameloft and the IRFU. Further partnerships are also in the works, with brands that include sports brands and household names.
“A piece of the puzzle that is often ignored is that, growing up, there were always kids that were a bit older than us that we would copy. That’s the perfect model,” said Dr McGann.
“The biggest problem now is that the older kids don’t play these games anymore, they’ve lost the skills, and we are reliant on adults to show kids. The difference between adult movement and kids’ movement is vast.”
Existing body tracking technology is historically based on adult data, and as such can fail to understand a child’s movement. MoveAhead has been built specifically for children.
The platform uses child-centred science blended with data, and has been designed to keep children’s privacy safe. The system does not take photos or videos of children, with only skeletal data captured and converted to numbers.
Backed by Enterprise Ireland, MoveAhead employs 10 people. It recently raised a pre-seed round of more than €1 million, with plans for a seed round next year. The company is chaired by Sean Mitchel, cofounder of computer vision company Movidius, which was bought by Intel for €300 million.
“The horse has bolted. Play habits have changed and children are simply not developing physical skills the way they were developed in the past,” said Dr Issartel.
“We are not trying to replace real-life play, instead, we want to empower children to also develop key movement skills whilst they are on their phones and in front of their TVs etc, so that they can take these new competencies and experience success in real life play situations and hopefully, be active – for life.”
