Can on-board computers make riders smarter?

By Matt Boxler

I’m sure snowboarders who have been on the scene for awhile (and for some that could mean 25 years or more) have observed one undeniable truth in the snowsports industry – skiing has undergone more makeovers than Joan Rivers.

We won’t even mention wooden “edges,” graduated lengths, or zero sidecut. In the last decade, skiing’s “technological revolution” introduced shorter, shaped skis capable of carving pure turns at high speeds – much like the source of its technological inspiration – the snowboard.

But what of snowboarding itself? Ever since Jake Burton connected bindings to board in the late 1970s, there hasn’t been significant change, relatively speaking, to snowboard design. Is this because snowboarding technology is so far ahead of the evolutionary curve that it missed out on this technological revolution?

You ain’t seen nothing yet. According to Jim Carroll, international futurist, trends and innovation expert, snowboarding is on the verge of a high-tech explosion. In fact, it’s already started. Carroll, who does most of his skiing at a private resort north of Toronto, is a highly sought-after speaker and consultant for some of America’s largest companies.

We’ve seen the preliminary signs: jackets with built-in iPod controls, helmets wired for sound. “That’s cool stuff, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” says Carroll. “It’s about much more than iPods.”

Snowboards will continue to gain intelligence, says Carroll, who predicts rapid advances in on-board chip technology. These chips, combined with insight into kinesiology, will provide on-board motion analysis as well as direct links into muscle contraction, with appropriate real-time ride adjustment. “Seriously, Carroll says, both skis and snowboards are due to gain quite a bit of on-board tech in the next decade.”

Carroll, who was named by Business Week as a leading source for insight on innovation and creativity, said senior management baby boomers might not get it, but the generation of young kids today do. “They’re wired, hyper-connected, and are expecting a world in which they can easily link and interact with the stuff that surrounds them. To them, a snowboard with a chip is as normal as is a movie with popcorn. Things link. That’s what they do. And when they link, they become a part of their massively interlinked world.”

The arrival of on-board tech, Carroll predicts, will produce an industry boost similar to shaped skis a decade ago. On-board integration will make it easier for new snowboarders to learn to ride, and for more accomplished riders to be more accomplished in all different terrains.

“It’s about extensibility,” Carroll says. “Smart manufacturers will build a platform that customers can tinker with, add on to, modify and enhance. If I’m bringing a new snowboard to market that provides for all kinds of interactivity, I want to build into it a set of capabilities that will let the customers develop things that I might not even imagine is possible.”

We will likely see webcams, ride analyzers and all kinds of other technology integrated into snowboarding gear. Burton recently partnered with Motorola for BluTooth integration, and there’s no doubt we’ll see full-fledged Internet connectivity into both the board and the gear.

Every board may soon have its own IP address that it will grab from an in-park server. Once it has an Internet address, all kinds of creativity will blossom as board and software become integrated. “Smart snowboard companies will adopt the open-source model, allowing anyone to hack cool applications for a board,” Carroll says. “We will likely see some terrain parks get wired.”

A wired terrain park can pick up a rider’s RFID signal (Radio Frequency Identity), and film the rider with a variety of cams in the park. During après-ski festivities, the rider can simply swipe their park card to search and play the video from earlier in the day.

Carroll says snowboard companies will come up with new lines for those aging riders among us, the Gen-Xers whose bodies can’t take the punishment they once could. “We will likely see a unique set of boards that will use on-board technology to provide a smoother ride.

Smart-goggles will also become part of the scene,” Carroll predicts. They’ll use the same virtual-cockpit helmet-mounted display that the military is using. “With a voice command, I’ll be able to pull up an integrated trail map/condition report,” Carroll says. “It will be displayed on the thin film of your goggles so it simply “appears” in the air in front of you.”

This connectivity will provide an opportunity for on-hill marketing. Snowboards will link to LCD displays both indoors and outdoors, which will instantly change and evolve to show advertisements related to the boarder/skier profile.

While this might sound more treacherous than a high-speed interstate filled with drivers on their cell phones, start getting used to these concepts now. If there’s one thing skiing has taught us it’s that this is an industry eager to market the next new makeover. We’ll all grow old, but the industry eagerly drinks from the fountain