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Cycling Aerodynamic Measurement with Body Rocket
681 Plays13 days ago
Body Rocket founder Eric DeGolier joins Andrew and Michael to delve into the complexities of aerodynamic measurement in cycling, challenging the limitations of traditional methods. We explore the inherent flaws in existing technologies that rely on indirect measurements and discuss Body Rocket's approach that directly measures drag force.
For more info, follow Body Rocket at their website and on Instagram and read the preprint of the University of Kent study validating the technology.
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Transcript
Introduction to Endurance Innovation
00:00:00
Speaker
Andrew, when we were first talking, Eric and I, he was he was going through the formulas. I'm like, oh man, I got i got to dust off my my aff fluid dynamics textbook from third year engineering, or or or just have Andrew on the podcast. That would be that would be the more straightforward way of doing it. I'm your standard dust collector. or the Or the brain trust. I don't know. I think you could spin it in a better way.
00:00:29
Speaker
Hi everyone, I'm Andrew. And I'm Michael. And you're listening to the Endurance Innovation Podcast.
Introducing Guest Eric DeGolier
00:00:47
Speaker
Hey everyone and welcome back to Endurance Innovation. Joining Andrew and myself today is a guest who we've ah wanted to have on the show for quite some time and that is without teasing it out for too long, Eric DeGolier of ah Body Rocket.
00:01:03
Speaker
ah Eric ah has been on our radar and Eric's platform has been on our radar for quite some time. Actually, before we even ah took our two-year hiatus, um but then the stars didn't align then, but I'm very happy that they are aligning now. Eric, thank you very much for taking the time to talk to us today. Welcome to the show. Pleasure to be here. You've been on my radar for a similar amount of time. I was disappointed to see the the show stop ah around the time I was looking for your contact information, so I'm very happy to be here.
00:01:30
Speaker
Yeah, I know it was fun when i ah when I announced the relaunch with our little teaser. You were one of the first folks that reached out and said, hey, we should have a conversation. So here we
Eric's Background in Racing and Engineering
00:01:40
Speaker
are. To kick us off, why don't you give folks a little bit of a background on where you came from and how you ended up being you know the ah the person behind body rocking. And then we can obviously dive into the technology and all the fun, gory, mathematical details ah involved.
00:01:56
Speaker
That's all my favorite stuff. Perfect. That's why you're here, Andrew. That was a good idea. Let's get the the light floppy stuff out of the way first. so I think there's two key aspects of of my background that that are important. um I used to race at a reasonably high level, ah had dreams of Tour de France like everyone else, but he eventually realized that the track was where I was at. I ended up ah representing the US s at the 2004 Athens Paralympic Games as a pilot on a ah tandem with Matt King, who's a four-time Paralympian. who so ah yeah um I spent a ah decade riding and racing and certainly had an appreciation for all things performance. um and Alongside that, I was getting my mechanical engineering degree and got very fortunate to have my first job in industry be at PowerTap in the very very early days, so 2001.
Eric's Early Career at PowerTap
00:02:47
Speaker
um The company had just been purchased from Jesse Ambrosina by Saris, and we were um in in the process of yeah getting rid of all the sort of waterproofing issues and stuff that that we'd inherited with that product. um But yeah, very fortunate to just watch that whole industry grow. Aerodynamics, live aerodynamics and outdoor aerodynamics is very similar to to Power, and so there's a lot from my learning and my experience there that we apply to to Body Rocket and the product that we're building.
00:03:14
Speaker
Very cool. Yeah, I mean, I was an early user of PowerTap, both in the both in the hubs and in the pedals. And I remember, you know, and that it was ah it was a big step changer. I remember going from, I don't think the pedals were my second power meter, but the hub was definitely my first. It was like a second hand set of wheels that had this this new device built into them that I'd, you know, never never encountered before.
Challenges with Aerodynamic Sensors
00:03:38
Speaker
And then there was a lot of the same kind of conversation, I think, around, as we have around, um you know, aerodynamic sensors like, okay, well, does it work? Does it does it have issues? Does it, does you know, does it do what it purports to do? Which is always my first question. And then and then the the second question is like, okay, well, great. what do we What do we do with it? And this is, you know, we're not going to get into it just yet with the, on the body rocket side of things or other aerosensor side of things. But yeah, I think I totally understand what you're saying in terms of the parallel growth paths from power meters to to where we are with aerodynamic sensors.
00:04:12
Speaker
I do remember those conversations about the, the power meters with, um, you know, what do you do with it? What, so what I've got my power now what, um, and you would be hard pressed to find anyone who rides without power these days, uh, at least anyone at a high level. So when you're getting into the, the sport for sure, it takes a while to get a power meter, but, uh, yeah, it's just completely ubiquitous now.
00:04:34
Speaker
Yeah, some of the things you touched on though, you know very, very aware of and we're trying to do slightly differently because it was ah it was a good decade between when power meters came out and when there was this sort of framework of ah how to to use them as a non-technical
Evolution of Power Meters in Cycling
00:04:50
Speaker
amateur at least. right i mean you couldnt from Fairly early early on, you could read all the papers and kind of stay on the cutting edge of things. But if you wanted to just ride your bike and use a power meter to to do well, um it was yeah it was closer to the end of the decade before that was a fairly straightforward thing to do. Yeah. There was ah there was the the the book that I think everyone had who was at all serious was the the training and racing with a power meter. Yeah. That that book that book was awesome. I think that was the kind of the first easy to understand. You didn't have to read the the papers to to get the nuggets. And there was still a lot of really practical advice. like i still I still have a copy of it. And from time to time, I crack it open. like yeah Most of this still applies. like It's not that that the world has gone 180 degrees from the advice that those folks gave us back then.
00:05:31
Speaker
yeah Yeah, and it changed the industry as as well. ah you know If you had a coach in the 80s or 90s, they were in your town and you met him on this you know straight stretch road at the edge of town. They clocked some efforts and they wrote your your schedule for the next month um and power meters changed that. Right now, we work with the best coach we can afford. It doesn't really matter where they are. We're just sharing power files. That's changed a lot. The currency of coaching is power file as well as as you know a lot of of new sensors that are coming in as well. um But we see the the same thing with with aerodynamics right now. um You go to an aerodynamics who's sitting in a wind tunnel or ah happens to be located near a velodrome and you work with them. um We want to enable them to be able to work with people anywhere as well once so one the data is the but thing that that needs to be analyzed.
00:06:19
Speaker
And that would have been the equivalent of going to a metabolic testing lab previously, I think. um And that was just not practical for most people and not cheap. but So it's, ah it's definitely been interesting watching the industry evolve and some of these sensors get more and more advanced and the ability to use them improving and just the knowledge and awareness around them increasing as well.
00:06:39
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Totally agree. on you And even though like power meter didn't fully replace the labs, I think there's now, you know with the likes of like what Aerotune does and what Inside does, there's some metabolic testing that you can do ah with ah with just power data. And it's ah it's it's quite fascinating stuff. But ah coming back to ah the development of arrow sensors or drag measurement tools, um yeah I remember the first the first one, I mean, I think it was probably the the i-bike, the Newton i-bike, that was on my radar. But the first one I personally used was the No Show Connect. And I remember sitting in a little room in the velodrome here in Milton in Ontario with them presenting it to us. And I was one of the first people to get my hands on it. And this was, I think,
00:07:24
Speaker
I think ah probably around 2018. So they you know they went commercial around then and now we're more than six years later. And these things still haven't really caught on, Eric, right? Like there yeah still isn't one on i know very many bikes out in, you know, even with with some very serious people. So what are some of the challenges around ah ah around getting this technology to market and to to adoption, do you think?
Technical Challenges in Aerodynamic Sensors
00:07:53
Speaker
Yeah, well, look, you've had a lot of people on to answer that question. I think I'm going to answer it a little bit differently. Aerodynamics is, I guess, yeah, there's a lot sort of going on in aerodynamics. And I think we're trying to sort of decouple that. But in terms of the technical side and the sort of mathematics side,
00:08:14
Speaker
Um, the, the arrow sensors when they came out, they were a big step forward. Um, but they ultimately were still, uh, you know, an equation that you had to solve sort of three unknowns for. And i'm I'm kind of diving into the deep end here. So yeah ah there's ah there's no, there's no avoiding it. I think, uh, sooner or later we're dumping it.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah, so you've got an equation and and you're trying to solve for rolling resistance, you're trying to solve for drivetrain losses, and you're trying to solve for aerodynamics um or or drag force. And you're also making some assumptions, the biggest one being that your weight is staying constant.
00:08:47
Speaker
um And if you get all of those things right, then the CDA number that you get out of it is is valid, right? And there's some you know there's some some studies and some paper behind that, but they're all in velodromes. um And you know even those, if you you know if you don't have, um well arguably if you weren't going fast enough, um then you there's not good results there. the The only paper that I'm aware of that really shows ah The last generation of aero sensors in a good light is is one that has the Danish team pursuit, Olympic team pursuit squad going 50K an hour and and getting some good results from. So um yeah, ah so so once you get out into the real world, then it's really difficult to difficult to control things like rolling resistance drivetra losses um and And so I looked at it as, you know, with my experience in in
00:09:37
Speaker
and power meters and and just thinking about, well, what does this need to be to be a consumer product? and i said this there's You're asking so much of the consumer. They have to understand so much about how this can go wrong to get good results that this this can't be the way. um Yeah, so I kicked this around for a while back when the iBike came out because that's what got me curious is as well. I kind of figured the math under underneath it was like, No, I don't think so, but man, wouldn't it be cool? but you going interrupt you just because I want to do that little blast in the past. Weren't they trying to try to use aerodynamic drag to then calculate power from from that? They were doing something like they were doing the opposite of what you folks were doing or some of the folks are doing.
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, it literally is the foundation for for all these other arrow sensors. But when it came out, I think it was like 2004 or 2005, it was the the world's first indirect force power meter. um And yeah, it was it was supposed to use Newton's laws of physics to to back calculate what your power was.
00:10:33
Speaker
um And ah yeah, i as I recall the story, um he yeah the the the developer of this was clever enough to put ANT Plus in or they needed it for some of the reason. And so they chose to start sniffing out other power meters. So when people were reviewing, um the reviews were great because they were just the sort of applying a little bit of random noise on top of the the red power meter number from the from the direct force power meter. and So they're fudging it, huh?
00:11:01
Speaker
yeah Yeah, they were fudging it and and getting some good results. um and Then when they got busted on it, they ah quite cleverly or opportunistically turned around and said, hey, if you pair this with a direct force power meter, we'll give you your CDA. and That was the first on-bike aero meter.
00:11:19
Speaker
um and and Fundamentally, everything that's out there is still doing the exact same thing, is taking a power meter, using fundamentally the same calculation underneath. um and The promises that have been been made, i it it's not clear to me even what some of the promises are on the the latest generation of stuff, but mostly has been, we've got a better algorithm on top of this that's going to yeah solve ah the problems.
00:11:40
Speaker
um Yeah, and and i' I've looked at it and and you know place placed my bets on the other side and and said, ah these are problems that by the time you've solved them, you've put so many other sensors on your bike to to you know to solve them um that that it's it's you know harder than than what we're trying to do. so Yeah, so we we went about it differently and said, well, you know how would you directly measure ah you know your your aerodynamics?
Body Rocket's Drag Force Measurement
00:12:03
Speaker
And and CDA is is a calculated value, so you can't directly measure CDA, but the thing that was missing from everyone else's was measuring the drag force.
00:12:11
Speaker
So, if you go into a wind tunnel, they blow air across you, but there's a big sensor under the wind tunnel and that's measuring your drag force. And I guess the way I like to describe that is if you were to walk up to an athlete sitting on a bike in the wind tunnel and you pushed on their shoulder with five newtons or five pounds of force, the sensor under the wind tunnel is going to measure five newtons or five pounds of force.
00:12:30
Speaker
um and That's why we're going to a wind tunnel. It's what's so important about a wind tunnel. and they didn't to To take it outdoors, they kind of gave that up and said, well, we'll start with power and have to make all these other guesses. so I just asked the question, well, how could we actually measure drag force outdoors? and That's how I came to ah the body rocket system where we've taken that that force balance that normally sits under the bike. brought it up above the wheels and that allows us to take it out on the real world and ah measure that drag force directly. So um if you've got a ah ah bike in the wind tunnel with the body rocket sensor on it and you push on someone's shoulder, you see the same measurement on our system that you see in the wind tunnel balance. We've just brought that up into the the bike so you can take it outside. That gets rid of rolling resistance. It gets rid of drive train losses.
00:13:13
Speaker
And there's some some bits of the equation as well that make um velocity really, really difficult. And this helps with that as well. So ah in the equation for a virtual elevation is sort of the colloquial term for for what all the other the systems are doing. um You have your airspeed squared, and then you have road speed. So by the time you're multiplying those together, you've got velocity cubed. um And so you're looking for errors that are moving either at a linear rate or a squared rate.
00:13:41
Speaker
but you've um ah you ah sort of changes that are moving at a a linear or squared rate, but you've got errors that are moving at a cubed rate. So it's a real, real problem to you know to to make that a solution. Everything has to be perfect. um And so, yeah, we've gone a different way where there' you don't have to be so perfect on on everything.
00:14:00
Speaker
So to touch on a few points there, previously you were saying that very high speed is beneficial for for measuring more accurately measuring the CDA. And I think just for for context for everyone, that's because your drag force goes up so quickly. So as you mentioned, while the drag power goes up with the cube of velocity,
00:14:18
Speaker
um it it becomes so large that it just completely dwarfs the the rolling resistance or the other factors. So it's it's much easier to get a good stable CDA number as opposed to low speeds where ah where your your drag force may not be that large, your drag power may not be that large.
00:14:36
Speaker
um and your rolling resistance and other factors play a much larger role. yeah so is that Is that accurate in in saying that? That's a big part of it. but If you take an athlete and put them in a wind tunnel and test their CDA at ah at an increasing speeds, their CDA will drop slowly as the speed goes up. and That tends to to level off as well. so um yeah That's going out a lot more rapidly between 30K an hour and 40K an hour than it is between 40 and 45 and 45 and 50.
00:15:06
Speaker
Less there as well. so Small speed variations will sort of inject some some errors into that as as well. but yeah Between those two things, um it is easier to get you know good, reliable CD numbers at at high speeds. The other point I wanted to make was just ah maybe connecting the dots for some people who aren't as familiar with the other methods. um so we We talked about using a power meter, but what' what's really going on is we're trying to calculate the force at the wheels.
00:15:33
Speaker
um and With traditional methods of the arrow measurement, we're we're calculating the force of the wheels that's used to propel the rider, and then the drag is calculated based on that. So in in your case, you're just eliminating everything in between. So the assumptions about any rolling resistance that might affect the the power distribution or the power transmission, rather,
00:15:53
Speaker
um the drivetrain losses, everything else in the way, and just going directly to basically put that force balance that you'd find in a wind tunnel directly on the rider. um So that's that's the difference in the two methods, I think, and and we can probably get into much more detail on that.
00:16:09
Speaker
Yeah, that that is correct, though. Yeah. So if you want to ride through six inches of water, um it doesn't really matter that your rolling resistance has changed um or yeah that that your chain getting wet actually changed your drivetrain resistance as well. No, no, that makes a difference. We are just directly looking at the the drag force.
00:16:24
Speaker
Yeah, and that's super cool. And I think, especially with CRR, and I know Eric and I talked about this a little bit when we chatted a month ago, with CRR is still not super well understood, especially in changing conditions or, you know, in warming pavement or warming tires, you know,
00:16:41
Speaker
uh changes in the pavement quality like we just had the world championship in uh in
Gravity and Aerodynamic Measurements
00:16:46
Speaker
taupo and those those roads are notoriously bad for having chip seal you know they're the the rolling resistance on those roads is probably substantially higher than it would be on like good tarmac so you know you're testing in one place, racing somewhere else. sos So being able to decouple everything that happens below the saddle, below the pedals, below the bars from the rider themselves is awesome. My question is, and I haven't heard you mention it yet, is acceleration due to gravity. Because obviously that's a big piece when you're testing outside of the tunnel or outside of a velodrome. So that's something that at some point in time I would like to hear you talk about and how how your system takes that into account. Because the rest of it so far makes a lot of sense.
00:17:28
Speaker
Yeah, sure. but Yeah, weight doesn't really come into play if you're on a perfectly flat road. I mean, ah there's ah an element of that that that comes into the calculation for rolling resistance, but it's not going to change and and so it's it's not particularly important. um once you what What you realize once you start developing one of these systems is how few flat roads there are in the world. Yeah, they don't exist. yeah Everything rolls around ah a little bit. um and so We're looking for a force um that's in the 15 Newton range, say. um and Then you've got a force, your your body weight is is many times that. and so um When you do the trig on it, if you it's hard to do this without using my hands. but yeah We'll try to describe your your your hand your hand puppetry to the ah to the listeners.
00:18:20
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, i I'll go for it. But when you're when you're on a um horizontal road, your drag forces, which always act opposite to the direction of the bike, are perpendicular to your weight forces. and And so there is no mixing between the two. um But if you do the math on it, when the the body weight is so much larger in terms of forces,
00:18:39
Speaker
you do not have to get on much of a slope but before your body weight becomes ... I guess the way I describe it is that force starts to leak into the channel that you're're you're interested about. so for sure your yeah your Your drag force, which continues to act perpendicular to the direction of motion of your bike, which is no longer perpendicular to to the horizontal, starts to see some of that weight.
00:19:01
Speaker
And so that's why you need to know the weight on on any of these systems. um But we built into our system that not only are we measuring those horizontal forces, but we're also measuring the vertical forces at each sensor. So we've isolated the rider from the bike at all four points, you know and and we sum those in the horizontal to to get drag force, but we also are then monitoring the body weight as as well. And so um we're not just taking the number that you put in to your you know your bike computer when you when you got the system three months ago,
00:19:30
Speaker
um we're We're putting in- Before Christmas and after Christmas, right? Exactly. ah but But also at the start of the ride and at the end of the ride. so you know If is you're looking at losing one or two percent of your body weight through through dehydration, um which yeah you don't want to get under two percent, but it it certainly does happen, um that's that's notable. It starts to take ah you know have an effect in in those calculations. and so um We are monitoring that all the time as well. and so The weight that we're using to account for any change in inclination is your weight at that moment. so you're you're youre If I understand correctly, your ah your direct force measurement instruments are taking that ah are are used directly to calculate ah what the acceleration due to gravity
00:20:20
Speaker
is costing you whenever you go up or ah costing you when you're going up an incline or or you know helping you by going down an incline. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And Eric, I just realized we just jumped over something really, really important. Now, some folks who are familiar with your system probably don't need this little bit of a primer, but I bet the, you know, a large number of of individuals listening to this show, they're not intimately familiar with what
Focus on Rider Aerodynamics
00:20:43
Speaker
you have. So I think it it it merits a little bit of a description of what you're talking about. So you mentioned that you've got four of these force balances on the bike. Uh, can you go back a little bit and describe where they are and and why you do it the way that you do it? Just to give a.
00:20:57
Speaker
you know a more complete picture. Yeah. So to get the sensors above the wheels so we could roll the bike out on the real world, we had to decide where to put them. um And what we chose was to put them at the touch points of the rider. So there is one um separating your base bar on your TT or tri bike from your aero extensions. ah There's one that slots in between your seat post and your saddle. So you clamp our sensor to your seat post and then clamp your saddle to the top of our our sensor.
00:21:22
Speaker
um And then you replace your pedals with our pedals. And so we're looking at all the touch points between the rider and the bike. And in essence, then looking at how hard the bike is pushing the rider through the air and that is your drag force.
00:21:37
Speaker
um And it's probably worth, because we we should get at this it at some point. What that means is we are looking at the aerodynamics of the rider. And ah that's ah that's sort of, but we'll call it a trade-off. It's a trade-off in the system. So if you swap your wheels out, we're not going to be able to tell you what the difference is directly. We have all the same stuff. The the sensors at the pedals do double as an incredibly accurate power meter.
00:22:00
Speaker
um and um ah have We have the airspeed and we know your weight still and so ah we can do that calculation and we are working with a wheel manufacturers interested in in um using our systems to just take a look at at what that is. you know like at what what the um if if there's a benefit out of it. At the very least, we can do as well as anyone else in telling you what your wheels are, and we can do far, far better at telling you where your body is, and your body is 80% of your aerodynamics, which is why we decided that was the right trade-off to make. And of course, helmets, skin suits, aero extensions, you know between the arm bottles, but which you might know something about, ah but you know ah behind the but behind the saddle bottles, all those things can be you know directly tested and and and monitored. um
00:22:46
Speaker
ah you know long-term with the body rocket system. And if I was to put my finger on the scale here, I think that everything that happens ah below those contact points that you described, that's not interesting, honestly. like I mean, it's kind of interesting, but it's it's the, as you say, and obviously I agree, it's a much smaller effect than what your frame and wheels will do for you. 100%, there's a difference there between aero-optimized equipment and non-aero-optimized equipment. There's some really interesting stuff around tires and tire wheel interfaces that people have been really playing around with.
00:23:17
Speaker
I mean, for a while now, but I think it's becoming more of a thing with wider tires. But the really interesting stuff is, as as you say, what's happening above above those contact points with the rider, all the equipment. So that's i think that's I don't think you're giving up that much by ah by not looking at that stuff below. ah So that yeah, that makes sense.
00:23:36
Speaker
I don't want to discount those things. like If you just bought a two grand pair of wheels, yeah, you want to know if they're faster or not. right um but Every bike is coming with a 40 mil or deeper set of wheels to start with. and so You start to get into kind of kind of marginal gains there. and and it's It's more like ah you know a car. you you build You design one and you build thousands. right so I think it's it's great that people are testing wheel tire interfaces and cataloging it. um but once one person's tested, yeah that does work for everyone. You can look it up. That's right. That's great. yeah And there's there's a lot less interaction between the rider and what happens at the front wheel, because it's hitting you know pretty much undisturbed air. And yeah, there's more interaction at the rear wheel. But I haven't talked to anyone who really has a very deep understanding of what that interaction looks like, because it it gets it gets really, really messy back there.
00:24:25
Speaker
So yeah, I agree with you. You can you can probably have, ah just if you do enough research, a pretty good idea of what a really fast wheel and tire combination is, but it's impossible to do the same thing for what a really fast position is for you, because there's just so many more ah so many more interactions with you know ah skin suits and helmets and body positions and all that other
Personalized Aerodynamic Testing
00:24:46
Speaker
stuff.
00:24:46
Speaker
Well, yeah, and that's the big thing is is for you, right? if yeah you know If somebody who tested all the wheel tire combinations did it all on a zip wheel, you can go buy that same zip wheel and be pretty confident it's the same shape and that the tires you buy are going to work the same on you. Your body is not going to be the same as as their body or anyone else's body. And and you know we we've been hearing this for God, it feels like a decade now. right you know The aerodynamic results are individual and you know some magazine will do a test on on helmets and then finish it by saying, you know these this worked for me, but go test your own. Totally. That's why those all those aero reviews are always kind of like, with the the the size of the grain of salt you got to eat with those aero reviews is pretty substantial.
00:25:28
Speaker
and But there's there's almost no better solutions to the right. I mean, that that's there's a lot of of eyeball aerodynamics going on out there right now because that's the tools people have. so A lot of people don't reno have have access to you know to a wind tunnel or or a velodrome. And i certainly the feeling I get is that the level of confidence in in sort of on-road testing options that are out there is is still pretty low. A lot of people aren't are hesitant to to use those. So um yeah, i'm I'm hoping that we can sort of fill that gap and and When when ah a journalist writes an article and says, results may vary, they can they can go out and and test for themselves. And I do think that in the past few years, there's been kind of convergent evolution and convergent development of all the the equipment. So there's probably not as much of a difference between the top wheels and kind of mid-range wheels now as there was 10 years ago. And same with frames, there's not that much of a difference. so
00:26:22
Speaker
um but you know rider one and rider two getting on the bike, there's still the same difference there ever was there. Um, and, and really finding out that difference is what matters. Um, the only thing that could be missing from this whole equation is just the interaction between the rider and the bike, because sometimes you can, you can shift the aerodynamics from one side to the other. Um, but, uh, but I still think that's a relatively minimal factor compared to the rest of the things that we're looking at. And.
00:26:51
Speaker
as you said, 80% or 85% of the drag comes from the the rider. um So that's definitely the low-hanging fruit there. Yeah. yeah we definitely you know That's that's a a good question, Andrew, and something that we've been looking in and into as as
Yaw Sweeps and Real-World Testing
00:27:05
Speaker
well. so um we In our own wind tunnel validation, we've done not just head on at different speeds, but done yaw sweeps as as well. um so yeah ah it's It's very interesting stuff, and and that is that's the indication so far is that there's any um any connection there is is relatively small, certainly a lot smaller than the sort of changes a shrug of your shoulders can make.
00:27:27
Speaker
I have another question, Eric, about the system itself. So you you told us about the four sensors that you use, the the ones that connect the rider to the bike, you know the four traditional contact points, bar, saddle, two pedals. um is there a ah Does your system include, or are you thinking of of doing an actual airspeed sensor? Does that add value? Where does that fit, if it fits? Yeah, it does include an airspeed sensor. so To get to CDA, you do need to know airspeed. um and so It definitely still includes an airspeed sensor. um If you've been following us along, you've you've seen a trajectory of very big, ungainly things to slightly smaller things.
00:28:04
Speaker
um and and you will have also seen some competitive products on our bike. At least the way I see it, what we're bringing to the party here is direct force drag measurement, and that's the new and valuable thing. We need airspeed. I'm not too precious about how we get there. um I think we've been pretty open that we are evaluating a couple of other products that are our existing as well. So um yeah, i'm I'm quite confident that we will get good airspeed and increasingly confident that there's companies in the market who can provide that to us ah for a reasonable cost. And so it's yeah it's it's likely that the ah the body rocket system will come with a recognizable airspeed sensor on it.
00:28:43
Speaker
Unfortunately, that's not particularly new technology. Pedotubes have been around for 100 years, 100 plus years. um So it's it's something that has seen a lot of engineering development. and There's been countless papers that that talk about ah yaw sensitivities, things like that, how to design around these these different factors. so um So I think you've got a lot of help and in coming up with a design that's quite robust there.
00:29:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah mean credit where credit to do that the current generation, which I'd call sort of the third generation aero sensors because you had iBike back in the the late 2000s and then you had No Show and Aeropod in the sort of mid 2010s. The third generation sensors are a step on from the second generation's sensors, not only in in their ability to measure yaw, which is super important to sort of disambiguated and help people understand you know what to do with their aerodynamics, um but also in in the accuracy of of the ah just just straight line airspeed. And then one last question about sensors. Speed sensor, you need one of those still? Yes. ah
00:29:47
Speaker
as i As I alluded to, there's um ah there's less sensitivity to that than there is with the other ones. so um ah Anyone who's used this has probably become um a bit nervous about their their wheel speed sensors and and making sure everything things perfect and their rollout is is done. And yeah certainly it has to be, you know, a magnet on the wheel. um Yeah, we're a lot less sensitive to that. um We're just ah finishing up um some some of our own internal research to um make sure that we can approve a hub based sensor as well as the fork based ones. um And looking at GPS as well. And i'm I'm optimistic that we'll actually get there.
00:30:27
Speaker
That's interesting because, um ah yeah, absolutely, to your point, it it had to be the magnet sensor for the longest time for with with with everyone's system, and including the rollout. I remember doing testing with the Aerotune system, so no no sensor, I mean, no airspeed sensor, but using a hub-based speed sensor and getting nonsense data. And then Sebastian, their head aerodynamics guy, saying, like look, this is why you're youre this is why you're not getting anything useful, because you're you're using the wrong sensor. So yeah, I was totally totally relate to that.
00:30:57
Speaker
to those pain points. So losing that sensor would be a real win, I think, i mean because it's it was always a little bit fiddly to set up. yeah Yeah, and that's that's the thing we
Importance of Accurate Speed Sensors
00:31:08
Speaker
I mentioned, you've you've interviewed a lot of people on on this subject. That's one that that didn't come, I had not heard really mentioned a lot, but it's huge. um That is, particularly without an airspeed sensor, then it's it's you are very clearly just cubing that number. um and i don't I don't have my my plots to show because we're on a podcast, but if you look at a plot,
00:31:28
Speaker
of ah of a cubed ah function and a squared function, you will see that if there's any noise in your cubed function, you will have lost any any signal you're trying to find on your squared function. So yeah, it's it's definitely a big problem and and a big part of of you know what sets us apart.
00:31:44
Speaker
One other question, I guess, is we had touched on the importance of this, but um how do you actually measure the grade of the road? Because gravity the the gravity vector is important in the the forces you're measuring. So how do you how do you capture that? ah So I don't want to talk about it too much because there is some IP in there, but it is a group of- Trust Andrew to get really at the ah at the heart of the issue.
00:32:09
Speaker
you You bring up a really good point. like I don't know. If I listen to three different podcasts about ah you know what the struggle is with with virtual elevation sensors, I expect to get three different answers, or at least two. um But a common one that comes up is inclination. right And inclination is is a challenge for those. um And I would contend that inclination is a challenge for those because every time you change inclination, you also accelerate or decelerate. And so now you're back into having to deal with this this cubed function.
00:32:37
Speaker
um But inclination is still a challenge. It is less of a challenge for us because we don't have it coupled with the acceleration problems. We've got acceleration ah down pretty well, um but it is still a challenge. um and when we When we start delivering products in May, ah you are still going to have to train your ah your system on the loop you want to
Live CDA and Real-Time Adjustments
00:32:59
Speaker
ride on. You're going to have to train the system on that, and we'll be using GPS as as part of um and and his historical knowledge is as part of that solution. um We do fully expect to get to the point where you can ride a road and and a new road and and see that live, um but that's not going to be not going to be part of a launch. You'll have to train your loop. Okay. Well, I won't ask too many more questions because of the IP behind that. I think you should ask. the the worst The worst that Eric can say is, no, I'm not telling you.
00:33:30
Speaker
so it's It's a totally valid question, right? It's it's certainly been one of the bugbears of that system, or you know previous previous to the other, the cloak wheel virtual elevation systems. Yeah. I was thinking, kind of as you as you two were discussing, like what my next question was going to be, because I i kind of famously do these on the fly. but you you sort of you Eric, your answer pointed me in the direction I'm going to take this. and That is ah live CDA. so This has been, as far as I'm concerned, the holy grail of ah of these systems. um I remember referring back to that little room at the Milton Velodrome when I was meeting with the Noshio engineers. They were like, yeah, you put this on your bike. we it We have a Garmin data field. that says it's It's called Live CDA. And you ah you ride, and you can see your CDA, and you move your head, or you move your you know your shoulders, and you can see the effect on the CDA. I'm like, this is amazing. And of course, it didn't work. I mean, you know no no spoiler alerts here. And you know I think Noshio, to their credit, walked it back pretty quick.
00:34:30
Speaker
um I forgot if they even took it off the as an option. But I remember almost everybody that we've spoken to, or not everybody, but some people that we've spoken to, let's say, on this topic have said, yes, our device does live CDA. And yeah I've become progressively more skeptical about that claim. ah So as far as I'm concerned, I don't think there's anything right now that does that. And you said that you may be able to do it, but it's not going to be available at at launch if I understood you correctly. so Oh, no, no. We are 100% doing that. We've been given some demos over the the winter um that have just been just been amazing. yeah yeah
00:35:05
Speaker
um so we are're We're tunnel bound in the winter because ah it's it's quite rainy and and cold here in the UK, but um Silverstone has an amazing sister facility called the KSP tunnel. It's a 2.7 kilometer long disused railway tunnel that is mostly used for automotive testing. yeah um but they do yeah on on special occasions, they let bikes in there. and so um We've been yeah we've been ah showing our our wears off to most of the people in the industry right now. um We we sort of had our our commercial sale on on Kickstarter um and we and we got a really strong response just from people in the industry. and so We said, a I was going to spend the rest of, ah given the sort of limited quantities we we have at launch here, we're going to spend the rest of the
00:35:50
Speaker
winter kind of talking to to people in industry. But ah for sure, the live experience has actually been there for a couple of years. We've been good for a couple of years. we had I will never forget that the day we had our first great live experience, but we had an athlete that we were giving a demonstration of the system. He was wearing a long tail decoy helmet, um and he comes in and he says, every time I look down at my garment, my CDA goes up. We're that's real. That is happening. That's cool.
00:36:19
Speaker
um so Yeah, I mean, ah live CD is a really important part of this because then you can start to drive those behavioral changes. right like that That guy was was either going to move his garment to a spot where he doesn't have to move his head to see it or he was going to stop looking down at his garment um or change his helmet, ah you know but but you're not going to keep on on seeing that and not do something about it. and and that's I think this is an important part.
00:36:40
Speaker
um There's talking to to coaches and and people who are involved in in aerodynamics. like ah Athletes, if they're not seeing this stuff all the time, they start to not believe it, particularly at the pro level where they've just pushed harder on the pedals for their entire lives to to beat people. um it's it's It's tough to kind of get people in to believe some of the technology, but like power meters are universally used now because you can see it. It's right in front of you all the time. like You can't not believe it because the numbers are are right there and telling you you know what's what's going on, and what's working, what's not working.
00:37:13
Speaker
Hey folks, future Michael here, ah cutting in with a little bit of a clarification. ah So when I asked Eric about live CDA and whether or not that was possible with the system, ah following his ah explanation of how the the system did need to be trained ah to Um, optimally deal with elevation of the training circuit. Uh, and he said that the live CDA is, is very much a thing. Um, my, I asked him for a little bit of a clarification because how do you, how do you square those two things having to train the system and then having live CDA. And so, uh, he kindly clarified and that clarification was that live CDA is available.
00:37:51
Speaker
on a road course once that ah section of road has been trained. So once the body rocket algorithm understands the elevation that you're riding from repeated runs, um then you have live CDA. um He also mentioned that live CDA on a velodrome is available because, of course, there are no elevation changes. um And that in the future, they they suspect that they will be able to have live CDA even for an untrained course. um I thought it was an important point to clarify. For example, if you're in a race context or on a course you've never done before, that ah currently live CDA will not be available until that course is trained. OK, back to the original show.
00:38:39
Speaker
I don't know if I shared this with you in our initial correspondence, but the University of Kent is really close to publishing a paper. Oh, I'm sorry. This isn't going to be published. They're close to publishing a paper, which will be our own version of these disc tests.
00:38:55
Speaker
ah Yeah, so these these disc tests have been sort of the universal way to to validate a a field aerodynamic system. um And the University of Kent has just completed what I believe is the largest study in terms of number of of athletes that participated um and quite successful as as well. We were able to to show that we you know were able to identify the smallest changes in disc size um and also really exciting had the closest correlation ever reported between wind tunnel results and field results. And so ah yeah, for anyone trying to go between the two, that's ah that's a nice ah confidence ah boost. But when we when the riders finished that testing for us, we had them do two, four kilometer pursuits because that testing is done on a velodrome.
00:39:38
Speaker
We kept them blind to the live data through all of their disk testing because that that wasn't part of that protocol. um and so We had athletes go out never having seen live CDA before and do four two full-on 4K pursuits. um and ah the The data came back showing that they were able to keep a better CDA.
00:39:58
Speaker
um when they can see that that live data. And that's, you know, if you think about the first time you ride with a power meter, you're not quite sure what those numbers are. You know higher is better, um but you don't really know what you can do. And so I think there's there's a lot of promise and we definitely want to do some more studies there. But yeah, ah initial studies showed that you can keep a a lower CDA if you have knowledge of that.
00:40:17
Speaker
um And there's another university that had done some lab research on that previously that it looks to be picking that up. So we'll hope to be working with a university in the spring to to help them do a much larger field study of that.
00:40:31
Speaker
And that makes a lot of sense. When you get this feedback, you can adapt your body. It's kind of like a small evolution of the the whole process, trying to get more aerodynamics. so um And that that does beg the question, is this something that is going to be possible to use during competition? Is this something that people can self-optimize while they're racing?
00:40:50
Speaker
Yeah, yeah it i i I definitely think it's going to be. I'm really not concerned in triathlon. Triathlon is so open and embracing of technologies and we're not intrusive and you know getting into your bloodstream or anything. so it It seems like a no-brainer that we're going to get into triathlon. My goal is to have somebody racing a triathlon with our system on at some point in 2024. The path is a little bit longer in in cycling, um but I'm optimistic there as well. I think you can get you can you can keep most of the sensors on, which kind of I don't know how much you guys want to go off of aerodynamics. um But the only thing that's really contentious is the airspeed sensor that everyone else has to have as well. ah The rest of our sensors, well, the ones at the pedals literally double as as power meters, um as well as measuring the the ah
00:41:36
Speaker
Drag forces and then the weight forces um and the handlebar and saddle sensors are, you
Medical and Bike Fit Advantages
00:41:40
Speaker
know, roughly the same technology and so there's nothing illegal about any of those so you can be riding those um and um If you have all those you can be looking at your weight distribution um how you're sitting on the bike um and and that's ah caught the interest of of proteins and in in a way I didn't expect. um But we've had people from the ah the medical side of it going, well, if I can look at where a rider is sitting on a saddle and if they're favoring left and right, or if they're sitting further forward or back than they typically do, and I can do this all day, every day with them, um then I can you know help treat a saddle sore better. I can look at ah you know a hip injury or a knee injury and understand it.
00:42:21
Speaker
Cool. We've got people from that side looking at it and going, there' there's some some real medical implications and potentially some sort of bike fit implications as as well. Yeah, bike fits where my head went to immediately because it's ah you know I've done bike fits in the past at a fairly recreational level, let's say. but the The way that you fit a person, especially anyone who's going to be riding for a long time and you spend maybe a couple hours with them and you know they do some efforts perhaps,
00:42:48
Speaker
But their bike fit is going to change in a six hour Ironman bike ride. right So they their position on the bike as they fatigue or as they build you know uncomfortable you know pressure spots or whatever. So this is this is quite interesting from that perspective as well.
00:43:02
Speaker
yeah yeah In fact, we haven't dropped any names yet, but we've been working with with Christian Fluenfeld and Gustav Eden for for a couple of years. and We had the longest session that we had. you know we We had them on ah body rocket equipped bikes for several weeks in Flagstaff before they went to Kona. It was a tough situation because especially Christian, he hadn't been on a TT bike seriously in a couple of years.
00:43:26
Speaker
Um, and his training was all around a two hour event, not not an eight hour event. sure Um, and so we had a lot to accomplish in that time, but, but we thought, well, you know, God, the guys have been able to train in these positions and they look great in the positions. Um, and then you look at pictures of near the end of the bike. leg and They are in very different positions. and i yeah i wish I wish we had been able to keep the the sensors on them for that to to look at how their postures had changed and how their weight distribution had changed ah during the the race. so even you know Even with the athletes we are working with and then the help that we've been able to do, there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of of sort of growth and and and learning. um and that was That was one ah one of the things I wanted to mention with Powermeters. It took that decades to do the research and everything. um And so I've just been really keen to to get on that right away. um So we struck a deal with the University of of Kent. This is actually separate. This is in the the physics department. um So it's separate from some of the the research that I just talked about. um But we've had a physicist and a data analyst looking um at the the body rocket data and the metrics and helping sort of establish some of that um because yeah we don't want it to be 10 years between, ah you know, sort of when you just have CDA data, what do you do with it to here's what you do with it. So we've made a lot of strides in in that as well and and feel like we've got a product that um is already ah pretty easy to sort of get your your head around and and make gains with just off of the sort of ah support that we've we've built in. But yeah, a lot of work to to be done there, but I feel like we've got
Collaboration with University of Kent
00:45:02
Speaker
a really good start.
00:45:02
Speaker
comes with a bit of an operator's manual right off the gun as opposed to like, here you go, sport, figure out what you're going to do with this technology. Yeah. Yeah. And then some of it's just luck, right? I mean, we already had the PhD was going, and all of a sudden, chat GPT just blows up on the scene. um And I had some investors challenge me on it and be like, well, you know when you're out pitching for investment, ah when someone asks you, what's you know what is AI going to do to your industry? you know I had all my answers. Oh, we're using AI in some of the calibration. We're using AI to process this data. And he was like, no, what is chat GPT going to do to your industry? um And it just forced me to go off and spend a little two-week project. Like, okay, what would a chatbot and in you know aerodynamics look like? And I was blown away. and And so we really shifted the focus of the PhD. And yeah, what we have is a chatbot that just has that sort of fundamental aerodynamics knowledge and and will help steer you towards the right thing. That would be super cool. Yeah, that would be super cool. If you could get advice and be like, oh, you know, your position is this, your CDA is this, consider extending your reach or consider, you know, tilting your saddle. Like any one of those things, that would be a very interesting tool to have.
00:46:15
Speaker
Yeah, there's there's some of those things. And look, there's there's a lot of room to grow there. But a lot of it, we we kind of know what the big things are, right? Like changing the height of your ear pads and the extension and the angle and the width of your of your elbow pads. Those are the key things that are going to get your you know get your body into into position. And yet, when we give assistance to an athlete, their first impulse is to go borrow three helmets from their bodies and go test them. And so some of it is just... Yeah, yeah so it's it's getting people away from the shiny things and you know towards the the really important things. And that's actually, it sounds simple. um But having that little reminder there to go, you know oh, OK, you've got some helmets, great. I'll put this together for you. But just a reminder, you haven't actually worked you know on on on your extension and your your bar angle at all. And and you should really start there. It actually does ah help people just have a better experience with the product.
00:47:12
Speaker
One other benefit that I think could be useful down the road is if you're able to collect a lot of the data from different riders for bike manufacturers, knowing what changes are actually made by the riders and what needs to be done with the fit. um I think that is hugely valuable and it's not something that's ever really been studied.
00:47:31
Speaker
yeah Yeah, and there's there's two things we're doing on our along that lines. One is ah working specifically with bike fitters to understand how a bike fitter would use this this tool. um But when it comes to to bike companies, um that's almost almost secondary. What we've been able to do with bike companies in two cases already is um when there's been a failure on an athlete's bike, ah we've been able to provide them with a data set that that shows them all the forces that are going into the failed component.
Body Rocket as a Design Tool
00:48:00
Speaker
um because we have the horizontal force and going into the saddle and the handlebars, the vertical force as well as the twisting moment. um And so if if you are an engineer, we can show you ah exactly what forces to put into the top of your seat post to see what forces are going down through the rest of the bike. um and And same thing at the at the stem. So it's actually a great design tool in that sense. so um in terms of of you know this sort of pursuit of of light, but but robust and aero. If you've gone too light, we can help you go the other way. If you if you're being too conservative, we can help you trim those things off safely. so um yeah It's been a good effect.
00:48:41
Speaker
because the positions are so are getting so extended, and Gustav in particular went so radical with his position, we were feeding that information back to Giant and and saying, we're making an adapter that that fits Gustav's trinity. But by the way, these are the forces that are going into your mounting bolts. are do you Do you give us the blessing to to do this. um So yeah, it is certainly, you know, if you are making drastic changes, or you're sort of going outside of the the bounds of of normal, ah it's been it's been really nice to to be able to sort of feel like we're doing that safely, at least keeping everyone in informed.
00:49:18
Speaker
Hopefully, we'll convince ah bike manufacturers to actually give us bikes that are long enough for us to ride. like I know, Andrew, you and I have talked about this quite a bit, but going going longer. But on my bike in the back, um it's so I'm you know six feet tall. or just That's what I say on my dating profile. I'm like 182 centimeters, just under six feet. I ride a large or a 56. And i if i if I go up any bigger, I can't stand over it safely in the case of an emergency dismount. I don't want that kind of accident.
00:49:49
Speaker
But I cannot get a bike long enough. So i the the bike I have here is a Quintana Roo and the only reason I chose it is because it it had the longest reach to stand over that I could possibly find. That's why I think the CADX bike is so fun because it doesn't have a top tube and I think that's a really smart move on the design front. ah But also, yeah, manufacturers, if you're making tri-bikes specifically, make them longer because we we want to we want to stretch out and ah that's my that's my pitch. It's got to be coming. if you If you look at any of the pro races, I watched the London one where it was quite a bumpy course. I mean, the the tips of their bars are moving inches. like it's It's frightening. So yeah, um so yeah it's it's got to be coming.
Evolving Rider Positions
00:50:29
Speaker
they They've got to be reacting to that. What's so what's interesting for Mungi? historical perspective is seeing how the positions are kind of evolving towards the the old Graham O'Bry Superman position. That's really what we're getting towards, which was maybe not the safest position. So there's got to be some happy medium in between, but but it's definitely a fast position and we are starting to approach that again.
00:50:51
Speaker
Yeah, yeah it's it's interesting and we'll probably be partly to blame for that. I think that that that was around before you got there, to be honest. That's been around for a while. Oh, yeah, yeah. But you can put a hard numbers to it. Yes, yeah.
00:51:07
Speaker
Okay, I want to steer us a little bit into, ah pun only, a little bit intended, into into some of the like the practical elements of living with the the body rocket system. um So ah we had a question ah from our little listener AMA that I put up.
00:51:23
Speaker
around this, and this is something that I am very curious to learn myself. And um and and that is, look, these traditional ah airspeed sensors, the systems that we've had before body rocket, all you had to do was slap this thing to probably your Garmin mount or some other mount that you had in the front of your bike as far forward as possible to avoid that stagnation zone.
Living with the Body Rocket System
00:51:45
Speaker
um So that wasn't maybe a trivial thing to do, but now we're we're still doing that.
00:51:52
Speaker
Plus, we're adding four other sensors four other sensors on the bike. So what's the system like to live with? How easy is it to set up? How universal is it on the front end, which is really where my big question is with all the different kinds of cockpit setups there are? um And yeah, just how much of a ah much of a pain is it to get going?
00:52:13
Speaker
Yeah. um so We've made the mounting of the airspeed sensor easier because that mounts to the same place where our our handlebar sensor mounts. um so we've we've we've We've gone one step easier. The pedals are very similar to a set of power meter pedals. There's a slightly different install process, but but in general, um yeah you are you're mounting four things to your bike as a first step. ah You're going through a install procedure that will take ah two to five minutes and in in the case of ah the handlebar and the saddle or or the pedals. um and Then you're putting the bike in in a turbo and you're going through about a three or four minutes sort of process to sort of ah just validate that that everything is is functional and and working, and then you're ready to go. and That's the only time that you should have to to do that. um ah The handlebar sensor and the saddle sensor um can ah require a special adapter depending on the bike that you have.
00:53:10
Speaker
So, ah we have a stock set of adapters that would mount on a 31.8 bar and a regular 7mm round a saddle um a seat post. and that That works for most mid-range bikes. I think most mid-range bikes are still coming with some kind of a bar and a stem setup. um Some may have like the the Vision Metron or the the Profile Bar, which have some some um bolt onto the base bar itself. um And those fit a lot more like the Superbike setups. As far as the Superbikes at the top end of the range, ah we're supporting the top 10 brands in the of World Championship bike count every year, as well as any other brands that we've worked at worked with through you know sort of team associations or athlete associations.
00:53:58
Speaker
Can you give us an example? Petals are straightforward. I understand. they' always They always have the same kind of thread. you know you You thread them in, you're good to go. Yeah, there's some calibration, I get that. And and the the the the saddle one, we can talk about, but I'm mostly interested in that in that cockpit setup. So let's take you know pick any kind of superbike, whichever one you want. and You can pick like the Cadex or the Trinity or whatever. And what's that install look like?
00:54:20
Speaker
We'll pick two different ones sets to explain the sort of two common situations. so ah The specialized shiv is one that we fit. We've had Alex Dowsett and Nidee Lees shiv instrumented up and done testing with with both of them. um That is a dual riser mount. so There is a bolt two sets of bolts on each side of the base bar. They go up to your aero extensions.
00:54:42
Speaker
um And what we do is provide a bridge that goes across those. If you go into our social media, you'll be able to see that bike on our social media at points. So it's just in ah an aluminum ah piece that bolts into both of those two and then you know bridges them. So ah right above the stem of the of that ah um stem but base bar combination is a four volt mount for our our sensor. um and that's And our sensor and any additional riser stack that you need goes there. So the bike becomes a mono riser style bike.
00:55:19
Speaker
Now if you start with a model riser style bike like the Canyon or the new Giant Trinity, um then that's a little more straightforward. You take off the riser stack that you have on and you bolt our base plate to that and then our sensor attaches to that. And you keep your riser stack, our riser stack. So our system is then in control of the height of your bars. And in both those cases, we also provide the cross plate that goes back out to the aero extensions themselves. And the reason that we did that, so I see you thinking about that, Michael. Yeah, because I was like, hang on, you have two... Yeah, okay, sorry, go ahead. That's exactly what I was going to ask you though. Yeah, so in any mono riser system, you have to have a sort of
00:56:04
Speaker
t plate at the top to go back out to where your elbows need to sit um and so we provide that plate and the reason that we chose to provide that plate is that there's a broad disparity in in terms of how easy it is to adjust your cockpit. And your mark and so we said look if we're making a system the the the whole purpose is to free you to be able to understand your own aerodynamics and experiment and learn quickly, then we can't be asking you to to muddle around for 15 minutes to change your bars from you know five degrees to 10 degrees. it's just It just sort of work goes against the the whole point of what we're doing. So um yeah so we control that as well. ah Right now, it's ah it's a four bolt um ah straight. So four bolts right from the top of the bike ah that you loosen up, and then you have infinite adjustment like you would on a saddle to change your your bar angle from from zero to 30. And ah then the um the plate um has
00:57:05
Speaker
It's not 31 eight whatever whatever the bar whatever the sort of standard bar sizes for 22 to 22 to thank you. Scott, I got clamps for those so you can put whatever your your normal extensions are in there. And then it's got sort of a grid work of of bolts that adopts all of the different uber extensions that we've gotten our hands on so far. That's very cool. And obviously, you're goingnna add a little your your unit is going to add a little bit of stack to the ah to the you know the the to the pads, but no one's riding slammed anymore. So that's not ah that's not a limiting factor. right like Gone are the days when your time trialists were like we we're chewing on their bars. um
00:57:46
Speaker
All the short women in your audience are cursing you right now. that That's been our experience. Yeah, yeah that's that's a fair point. Yeah, that because the head tubes are still fairly tall. And if you are overall not very tall, yeah. Okay, I hear you. It's been a long time since I've been a short person on a bike.
00:58:05
Speaker
This is my experience. is it's just it's it's really People on small bikes um don't have quite the the stack. um But yeah, people on large bikes, ah yeah the head tube doesn't grow proportionally with the rest of the bike. um and And so you've got these pretty large stacks. ah We've got that down to about, I think it's 25 mil in the production version. So unless your bars are literally bolted to your, your extensions are bolted to your base bar, we've got you covered still. 25 is okay, yeah.
00:58:32
Speaker
Okay. And how much ah how much saddle seat post stack do you add with your adapter? That is somewhat bike specific, but if we just go with the sort of worst case and the the standard case where I talked about where you just simply, we give you a set of dummy seven mil rails that clamp into your own seat post, yeah um and then you put our sensor on top. um In that case, I believe it's a 65 mil stack. um It varies all the way down to a 20 mil stack, depending on and the the mounting hardware that we're um replacing it on some of the bikes. So most of the bikes that have all the bikes and that that we fit that have a sort of flat top on the seat post and then sort of three or four or five different bolts so you have a huge range that you can you can change your setback. um We're actually offering ah an adapter that fits directly to those because it just makes it's it's super cheap for us to do and relatively speaking and it is it's makes for a really clean setup and those are then you know not much difference at all.
00:59:27
Speaker
Very cool. ah So then I know you talked about specifically each individual system. So if you've got somebody who is, let's say, not a professional bike mechanic, but is comfortable wrenching and doing their own bike adjustments, thinking of myself here, um what would it be? How long would it take for me to to take a bike ah from stock to having your system completely installed?
00:59:48
Speaker
Yeah, so ah we expect it to take about 45 minutes, and if you break that down, the pedals are you know kind of calling five minutes if youre if you're being clumsy, and the seat post, again, call it another five minutes, and then there's about 20 minutes to go into setup, and then the rest of it is changing out the front end. So let's just go the clunkiest case is the the the double riser stack. So um let's take the let's take the the the the Trinity. A lot of people have that bite, they'll be familiar with it. um So you have to unbolt the bolts from the the bottom and unbolt your your extensions from the top and take those out um and then you bolt our extension on onto the bike and Figure out your your riser stack and put that on and Then if you ride Shimano or some of the older SRAM ones, then you're also gonna have to figure out the routing on The shifting on your extensions.
Field Installation of Body Rocket
01:00:54
Speaker
Yeah, the cables now that makes sense um One other question around this guy got lots of questions Actually, no, two other questions. You mentioned that there is a there's a, forget what you call it, a calibration setup, or something where you need a a turbo. So again, use case, if I'm a if i'm a fitter or an aero tester, and I'm going to do this obviously on the side of a road somewhere, um ah what am I am i bringing a trainer? what do i What does that step look like for me to be able to do on a bike if I want to do it in the field?
01:01:22
Speaker
I'd like to think that's an unusual case if you're going to actually swap a system onto a bike on the side of the road, um but let's let's go with that. If you're going to swap a bike out on ah you know ah swa swap a body rocket system in on the side of the road, then yeah, you would want to bring um you know fold a turbo trainer with you to to have someone ride that as well.
01:01:40
Speaker
Okay. Got it. And, uh, pedal standard, who, what, what are we using? Look Shimano, Shimano. Um, we, we were leaning towards look, um, but then as we started to get interested in the professional world, uh, it's so dominated by Shimano. And then we looked at this and it was like, oh, the patents are expired and it's about the same number of people using. And, and quite frankly, I don't think anyone cares if they switched from a look to a Shimano because the cleats are so similar anyway. So we've gone with, uh, with a Shimano compatible version.
01:02:09
Speaker
Right on. OK, I think that's all of it. We're probably going to get some questions from the the listenership, and all i'll just ah I'll treat those as ah as a post hoc sort of operation. So I'll send them your way, and you can answer them, and we can treat it that way.
01:02:21
Speaker
Cool. Okay. um can i Can I take a moment to plug our power meter as well? 100%. I was just talking about the... We can we can still keep talking. i'm just I'm just saying from the point of view of of living with the system. So listeners, if I missed anything, I think I got all the questions answered. Oh, um sorry. there was There was one more question. The the the question of, had nothing to do with living with the system, but what's the lowest CDA that you tested? Obviously, without naming names, because that was that was on the minds of a lot of listeners.
01:02:48
Speaker
Um, uh, we have seen a point one four, but there's a caveat with that. Okay. You have to keep in mind, we are measuring your body. That's 80% of what a wind tunnel would normally see. So yes that is a very quick, it's very quick, but it's not unprecedented quick. Yeah. So that excludes the bike. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
01:03:07
Speaker
wow So somewhere between roughly sort of 70, 80% of what the total would be if if you were getting that that done in a wind tunnel. So um to your listeners' ah questions, we haven't head-on tackled rolling resistance. So let's just say, to be 100% clear, we do not calculate rolling resistance. It is not part of what we're we're doing at all. I honestly think that makes a lot of sense because it was like it was such a giant pain in everyone's ass to try and figure out what CRR was and then remove it from the the formula when you're when you're calculating aerodynamic drag. so that ah As a solution, I think that makes a heap of sense. Yes. and I think now I have to put an an explicit sticker on our podcast for today.
01:03:52
Speaker
Way to go. Oh, I ruined it. Children children under 18 can no longer listen to us. what walt So um Eric, I think ah you've ticked all the boxes ah that I wanted to cover. Andrew, was there anything on your mind that you wanted to throw at Eric?
01:04:09
Speaker
No, i think I think we covered a lot of the aerodynamics side of things that I was really curious about. um It's definitely a novel approach to ah to the this problem that's existed for a while. and So it's it's nice to see some innovation happening rather than a few copycat systems that that are just trying to improve the algorithms. um This is truly a different look at things.
01:04:29
Speaker
Thank you. We've poured a ah lot of of energy into it. It's got a great team. I'm so proud of of the the team that that we put together and and are doing this. um And yeah, um i'm I'm glad you guys recognize that it is very different in in our approach and and yeah in our outcomes as as well. Yeah. And Eric, you mentioned that there was so there was some stuff you wanted to plug in. Plus, I have some kind of logistical questions around like when when's your system available, ah that that kind of all that kind of stuff. So talk to us about those practical considerations.
Availability and Pricing of Body Rocket
01:04:58
Speaker
Yeah, so um ah we we had a Kickstarter campaign um in the fall um and we were selling um just the the full system um and we got a lot of interest in just the power meter. um And so um it's not it's not up on our website yet, but in the next few weeks, or maybe it'll be early January, um ah it You will have an opportunity to purchase just the power meter as well. And along with that, we've we've posted a blog post that talks about the the accuracy of that. But um one of our our first sales was actually to the Silverstone Sports Engineering Hub because they sunk, I don't know, but probably a million plus into building a pedaling efficiency rig ah that allowed you to take a look at rolling resistance and drivetrain losses, tire pressures, all that kind of stuff.
01:05:49
Speaker
um ah in a full bike scenario. and They did that by looking at the power going into the system and then having a dynamometer on this giant two meter roller that your rear wheel sits on um to look at the the output power. and They built it and then they realized that there were no commercially available power meters that were precise enough to to give them the input power. um And just by the nature of what we're doing, because measuring aerodynamic drag is, I'll say, 10 times harder than than measuring power, um the the forces that that we're measuring at the the pedal, um we ended up with an incredibly precise power meter. And so they evaluated that and have bought several systems ah from us now. And yeah.
01:06:30
Speaker
I'm proud to say a lot of a lot of Olympians who were in in London ah found their way onto our pedals by way of the Silverstone Sports Engineering Hub's pedaling efficiency rig. That's not a bad first customer. Yeah, totally. Yeah. yeah and's I think a lot of this interest is almost... and we you know We are we are a premium system. Technology-wise, it's sort of two sets of power meter pedals plus an airspeed meter is how you'd look at um the the cost that it takes for this. And so um while we've been in pre-sale, we're up for 2,500 pounds, um but the the pedals appear to be something people are interested in, not only because of their their precision, but if someone's in the market for a precise power meter and it's a foot in the door to later upgrade to the full system, that's that's been interesting. So those will be up for sale. And then ah with that we will be the option that you can later buy the the other three sensors in the system to to upgrade to ah the full body rocket. good experience. Very cool. Yeah, and when you consider it that way, looking at the price, like if you have to buy a power meter anyway, or if you're planning on buying a power meter anyway, if you include that in the cost of what you're doing, it ah really, the incremental cost for the rest of the Euro system is not as substantial. um It's still a big investment, but it it certainly makes it a little bit more palatable if you include the other parts that you're getting with it. Yeah, and we hope people take that into into consideration. It is your, you're definitely getting a power meter upgrade and when you go to the system as well.
01:07:53
Speaker
Very cool. Well, Eric, I think this has been a a really interesting conversation and totally worth worth a two-plus year wait that we we mentioned at the beginning of the show. I'm glad we finally got you on, and we we had this conversation. And we're ah the last few episodes we did was more focused on cooling, and we're kind of trying to you know give ah give our listeners a balanced diet of ah of the nerdy elements of of our sport. So it's great to be talking aerodynamics again.
01:08:21
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. maybe we can Maybe we can even bring the two together at some point. The the other thing that we did talk about is that because we're looking at all the vertical forces, we're looking at at weight, and so we are able to monitor hydration as well. and so Cool. If you are helping people sweat less. Yeah, oh that is that is very interesting. because because Yeah, and and you would be you would be super super precise on that front too. huh Okay, this gets my brain going too.
01:08:48
Speaker
I see the smoke coming out of your ears. There will be a follow-on collaboration here. Yes, I think so. I think so for sure. One of the other things I just wanted to bring up quickly, um I was thinking of this earlier but didn't have a chance to to mention it at the time, but um when you're looking at the force on the the bar,
01:09:07
Speaker
That's something that could be quite useful in terms of just tracking how long someone stays in arrow position. um So as a coach, you ask a rider, did you stay in arrow position? Yes is the answer. It's not, yes, 90% of the time or 91% of the time. But it it gives you that feedback as well for for how much time of your training or of your racing that you're actually spending in your arrow bars as opposed to on the base bar.
01:09:31
Speaker
um Yeah, for sure. Obviously, that has a huge impact on aerodynamics because you're not taking advantage of them at all when you're riding on the base bar. Cool. Yeah. There's a lot that can be done with the submetrics, and then 100% we can, and and I would imagine we'll have a metric, probably not on your handlebars, but sort of a post-metric to tell you yeah how how well you did on that.
01:09:51
Speaker
ah in terms of of percentage time in the bars. We had an athlete that was evaluating the system last month. ah He came out with three skin suits, well a tri-suit and two skin suits. He does club time trials as well as triathlons. um so One was his tri-suit, one was his club skin suit, and one was a brand new version from the same brand that does his club skin suit.
01:10:15
Speaker
literally cutting the tags off it to to give it a test in ah with the system. um And he came back and his brand new skin suit was the slowest of three. And so this is the kind of thing that actually sort of casts doubt, right? Everybody's like, hold on, that doesn't make any sense, right? um and And particularly with the sort of history of of outdoor aerometers that we're having to overcome, you know, we we ah you know have to to sort of face these situations and and and and come you know come with a plausible explanation. and This one happened to be really easy um because we we pulled up his dashboards and we scrolled to his his body position metrics um because we do have these we're looking at the horizonvinntal horizontal and the vertical forces is in the moments. We can identify exactly where you're sitting on on a saddle. um and so We've come with a metric called shuffling, which is just how often you you know slide to the tip of your saddle and then and then reset. and His first two rides were pretty normal. I think he is a slight downhill on the way out on what he was doing and the slide up on the way back. He shuffled once on the way out and twice on the way back when he was at a higher power. um and Then the third run is just off the charts. I think he probably shuffles like 20 times in a four kilometer stretch. and so We pointed this out and we said, you know
01:11:32
Speaker
what what happened here. and And then, you know, we were all scratching our heads as to why this why the skin suit was lower. Only then does he say, Oh, yeah, the fabric was super slippery. And I just couldn't, you know, couldn't stay on the saddle. That would have been useful to know. But so you know this skin suit probably does test faster in the wind tunnel when you're pedaling at 100 watts and and not having to actually give it any stick. But yeah, it turned out to to be a you know different story. So it's it's those those sort of of moments um that really sort of bring you know bring to light that the whole real world having to do this in a real world environment and and ah deal with all the ah the sort of putting out power steering down the road.
01:12:15
Speaker
um We definitely have athletes you know come back in from from doing a run and say, I can't ride that position. don't even You don't even need to tell me how fast it was. I just can't ride that position. um Whereas you can come out of a wind tunnel going, I found the fastest position ever, and then realize that you can't ride it.
01:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's easy to forget that you don't race in a wind tunnel. So there's a lot of other considerations. Aerodynamics doesn't win
Impact of Aerodynamics on Speed
01:12:40
Speaker
races, nor does power. It's speed, right? No. yeah Exactly. Exactly. And so we we are just, you know, we're we're a metric in that mix. um but It's kind of the last metric that's missing. so Once you do have power output and and you do have aerodynamics, um you can talk to an athlete about speed. ah This is how it's affecting your speed. um and that's That's pretty interesting. interesting there's There's a lot of research to be done there. um This is the the first device that allows you to to monitor aerodynamics for long periods of time outdoors.
01:13:11
Speaker
um and you know there's There's a lot of of lab work on you know durability and endurance and fatigue and and stuff, but kind of bringing that all together with the aerodynamics. I think there's a lot of benefits that we're just scratching the surface of.
01:13:25
Speaker
um i was just thinking when we were talking about earlier about um like living with the system and setting it up. and Yes, it takes a little bit longer than than past systems, but there could be different models of you know coaching CDA or coaching like be or doing doing bike fit with aerodynamics in mind. What I've done in the past is we'd go out onto the road and we'd strap on a sensor, we'd do a bunch of runs, we'd do some ABBA stuff, and then we'd draw some conclusions and I give you a report at the end of the day.
01:13:52
Speaker
the The opportunity here could be to almost like you know if I'm a bike fitter with this sensor i could and i've got ah I've got a client, we could set it up on their bike and then have them ride for a week or two weeks or whatever and then maybe we do one or two outdoor sessions together and then at the end of that of that period then really come up with some some really interesting and actionable recommendations. I'm just really just thinking out loud here as to how things can be changed, things can be evolved.
01:14:18
Speaker
yeah Well, you're thinking pretty similar to to what we've been thinking as well. week We definitely, but both in terms of bike fit and aerodynamics, um that just makes a lot of sense, right? Even if you're going to a wind tunnel for a bike fit, if that professional in the wind tunnel can send you home with a body rocket system and monitor you for a couple of weeks, you're going to get a much better service.
Pilot Program and Future Prospects
01:14:36
Speaker
um and And I think same thing with ah with a bike fit. ah you you did I think you mentioned, well, you wanted to understand how a coach might work with the body rocket system. And and you did ask me you know if you're setting it up on the side of the road, um but we are actually just starting a pilot program with a coach and some of the athletes here in the UK to better understand that. And so, yeah, if if you're listening and you are a coach who's interested in using the body rocket system, please please do reach out because ah what we're building that. We have already recognized the need there and we do offer a coach's package, which is a slightly different setup than the
01:15:09
Speaker
consumer package, um but we're also working to help help you understand exactly what that business model would look like. um And I think certainly one of the things we'll be exploring is, do you leave that system with your athlete for several weeks afterwards as part of your service or a week or or whatever it is? Yeah, I think that that that could be a really interesting opportunity. And you can learn stuff that you never even thought, you know, was was on the table.
01:15:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's it's huge, right? I mean, this is this is the the problem with ah you know ah kind of the the previous systems is you you couldn't send your customer away with it and ask them to use it because it really did take A lot of people. Someone who understood, yes, all the ways it could go wrong to make sure that it was going right. Exactly. For sure. um Eric, thanks again. This has been great and really do appreciate your time and I'm very excited to to see what you folks, where where you and the, I guess, the ah the cycling world at large take the system over the next months and years.
01:16:10
Speaker
Yeah, well, thanks for the opportunity to to talk. it's been It's been great to talk to to both you guys. And yeah, um hopefully i said we can we can find a way to ah look at at hydration versus ah cooling and then see if take some next steps to together on that. For sure. See if there's a there there. Yeah, absolutely. Listeners, as always, thank you very much for tuning in. If you have any questions for Eric, either you don't get in touch with him directly. He's active on Instagram. We'll put all all of his contacts that he's willing to share in the show notes as well. If there are any questions you want us to follow up on, you can also just send those to me and I'll get them over to Eric as well. So as always, thank you very much for listening and we'll talk to you soon.