[Korea Contact-Free] "iPIXEL"Dreaming of the most famous AI-based Home Fitness•Rehabilitation System"

    LOS ANGELES, CA, December 14, 2022 /24-7PressRelease/ -- "We hope that when people think of home fitness or rehabilitation using AI, not only people in Korea but everyone around the world will think of iPIXEL."

This is the ambition of Sang-soo Lee, CEO of iPIXEL, who is participating in the 'CONTACT-FREE Leading Services in Life-friendly Field Activation Project' enforced by the Ministry of Science and ICT and National IT Industry Promotion Agency (Director Seong-wook Heo, hereinafter NIPA). iPIXEL was established in November 2017 with the vision of 'Digital Content Innovation through Artificial Intelligence'. They are conducting business centered on augmented reality contents and digital healthcare services using computer vision, a representative artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

iPIXEL has been selected as a home training designated task among NIPA's 'CONTACT-FREE Leading Services in Life-friendly Field Activation Project' and is enhancing corporate competitiveness. The 'CONTACT-FREE Leading Services in Life-friendly Field Activation Project' is being enforced by the Ministry of Science and ICT and NIPA to foster global-oriented CONTACT-FREE service companies and enhance the competitiveness of the Korean service and software industries. This year is the second year of this project. In this project, iPIXEL is carrying out the task of 'Enhancement of artificial intelligence home training service for CONTACT-FREE rehabilitation exercise and remote medical treatment.'

Last year, iPIXEL jointly launched 'HowFit' with Shinhan Life, an artificial intelligence home fitness service developed in-house. This service won the top prize at the Digico contest organized by KT, and it also won the best Google Play app award last year. In addition, it has been selected for various government-supported projects such as the Korea Technology Finance Corporation's 'Frontier Venture Business' and the Ministry of SMEs and Startups'. It has also attracted investment from private venture capital (VC) companies such as Platinum Technology Investment and Bluepoint Partners.

The company is also planning to launch the global service of "EXERCITE", an upgraded product with LG Electronics, based on their AI home fitness service know-how. In addition, they are working with CM Hospital and Severance Hospital to materialize the service through the task of advancing artificial intelligence home training service for CONTACT-FREE rehabilitation exercise and remote medical treatment.

In particular, iPIXEL used computer vision recognition technology to learn about 1,500 exercise movements into AI and stored them in their database. Through these technologies and databases, they have entered the artificial intelligence home fitness service market and introduced 'Howfit' jointly with Shinhan Life and they will uprade the service with more accurate posture motion recognition function and angle measurement called 'Exercite'. 'HowFit' recorded more than 500,000 downloads and won the 'Best App for Self-Development' selected by Google last year. Through 'EXERCITE', which is being developed for global service, they are preparing to expand their service to digital healthcare and rehabilitation.

iPIXEL's technology has the advantage of not sending customers' sensitive personal information to the server, which is called On Device AI (Edge AI, which calculates and implements AI on user devices such as smartphones without sending data to the server). It is free from privacy issues in services such as home fitness service and rehabilitation exercise. To protect technology, iPIXEL has completed application and registration of 5 technology patents in Korea and the US, including 'Real-time posture motion recognition system and recognition method using artificial intelligence' and 'Client Terminal for Performing Hybrid Machine Vision and Method Thereof'.

Customers of 'HowFit', an AI-based home fitness service, range from 20s to 50s, and in particular, users in their 30s and 40s account for about 70%. The purpose of using 'HowFit' is different for each age group of customers. For those in their 20s and younger, the most common purpose is to manage leisure life and beauty, and for those in their 40s and older, it is for their health and rehabilitation. Sang-soo Lee, CEO of iPIXEL, said, "The target of rehabilitation exercise service is patients with musculoskeletal disorders or who have undergone related surgery at hospitals. Through our alliance hospitals, we are trying to provide our services to patients who need rehabilitation exercises."

The motive for iPIXEL's application for the 'CONTACT-FREE Leading Services in Life-friendly Field Activation Project' is to advance the home training service through artificial intelligence, the company's main product. This coincides with the goal of the 'CONTACT-FREE Leading Services in Life-friendly Field Activation Project'. CEO Lee said, "We identified the market response and needs while providing an AI-based home fitness service, and we thought that providing home rehabilitation exercises for people suffering from musculoskeletal disorders was a true life-friendly service. As our service become more known, the medical institutions contacted us first and discussed the provision of rehabilitation exercise services."

iPIXEL's "EXERCITE" service has several features. First, it is an exercise database (DB). It already has more than 1,455 standard workout data. Recognize and analyze more exercise types than competitors. Second, it is multi-platform. It can be used on various platforms, including Android and iOS mobile apps, TV apps, set-top boxes (KT GiGA Genie, others.), and webOS (LG Smart TV). Third, it is AI optimization and response speed. The response speed is 10 to 30ms based on mobile phones, and the response speed has been increased with AI optimization. Fourth, it is On Device AI. The main AI process of recognizing and calculating motions is processed by the client (device) rather than by communication with the server, and only the result value is transmitted to the server. It not only makes so the processing speed faster, but personal sensitive information does not need to be transmitted to the server.

With these features and advantages, iPIXEL has accumulated about 2.3 billion KRW in seed and pre-A investment rounds. Five patents have already been registered in Korea, one patent registration in the US, and two PCT applications. CEO Lee said, "Participation in the 'CONTACT-FREE Leading Services in Life-friendly Field Activation Project' has been of great help in commercialization of technology as well as in resolving financial difficulties. What used to be an internal project for the company is rapidly developing, testing, and demonstrating products by participating in this project."

They are also planning to expand abroad. CEO Lee said, "It would be nice to have a network with medical institutions in North American countries (US, Canada), Western European countries (UK, France, Germany, etc.), and Asia (Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, etc.). It would be also nice if we have an opportunity to meet someone in charge of global TV manufacturing business. We want to expand the currently available AI home fitness service globally. In the case of rehabilitation, we want to expand domestic alliance hospitals network, so that patients with musculoskeletal disorders can receive prescriptions for rehabilitation exercises and recover at home, and we want to showcase these rehabilitation services globally."

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