Product Design Studio
Your bone-dry skis were fine this morning, but when the sun came out and warmed up the surface of the snow, they quickly became grabby and dangerous. Normally you'd have to call it a day or drop $50 on a hand-wax job. Those days are soon to be over.
In 2015, Swarm was presented with an idea. It was one of those HOLY COW light bulb moments — an automated ski-tuning machine that operates just like Redbox. Witness the miracle of birth — it's a SkiQuicky!
Swarm was faced with numerous challenges to make SkiQuicky a viable product. The machine had to be completely self-contained, reliable, easy to use, and had to accept a huge variety of ski and snowboard shapes in various states of cleanliness and disrepair. It had to reliably handle all this without damaging people's skis, and without the skis damaging the machine. Additionally, it needed to run unattended for an entire season with minimal maintenance. Challenge accepted.
Swarm developed a number of patent-pending technologies to hold the skis, disengage alpine ski brakes, and apply a premium coat of wax. Swarm developed a complete automation system — including myriad sensors, robust controllers, reliable servo motors, and an entire wax-handling system. We then wrote the code for complex firmware and a complete cloud-based backend for real-time remote management of thousands of machines around the world.
The finished product is a fully automated ski- and snowboard-waxing machine. In about four minutes your skis are shred-ready. Each smart machine is aware of the current snow conditions, and selects the perfect wax. For just a few bucks, skiers can have a full day of amazing ski performance without planning a day ahead, leaving their skis at a shop, and racing back to the shop before the lifts open to pick up their gear.
Services
Concept Development
Mechanical System Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Industrial Design
Iterative Prototyping
Firmware Development
User Interface Design
System Architecture
Cloud Based Backend Development
Brand Development / Logo Design
Marketing Strategy
Video Production
Web Design
Short Run Production