The CTO is challenging motion capture’s $200K price tag with smartphone AI.
The idea of motion capture is not a new concept, nor is the technology that is able to record and then process it. While many are aware that the technology has been used in everything from robotics to video games, what many do not understand is its applications for sports science.
Eliseo Robles, the chief technology officer at NurivaTech, a company founded by CEO Joseph Caruso, leads a team of people that spans computer vision, machine learning, and full-stack development of their flagship product, sportFX.ai. This markerless motion capture platform utilizes the power of smartphone video to deliver biomechanical analysis that has traditionally been locked behind $200K+ laboratory setups. Robles is also quick to credit the engineering team behind sportFX.ai. “I’m lucky to lead a really talented group of engineers,” he says. “The team is the reason any of this works.”
The original challenge behind motion capture technology
The benchmark in motion capture technology has typically come from marker-based lab systems, which have traditionally required high cost and the appropriate infrastructure to utilize the technology. The idea of cost being prohibitive in the development of accessible technology is in part why Eliseo Robles chose to move into the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
“My first company, Lumina Education, was born from watching rural schools in Mexico get left behind by EdTech that was only designed for well-funded districts,” Robles shares. “Lumina Education went on to serve more than 5,000 students, and actually worked for those communities, and that exit taught me something I keep coming back to: the most interesting technology problems aren't about building something new, they're about making something that already exists accessible to people who were priced out.”
This same idea drives what Robles and his team are doing at NurivaTech with their new technology, sportFX.ai.
A solution to a problem
The challenge for Eliseo Robles and the NurivaTech team in building sportFX.ai has been trying to get people to understand that the technology he and his team built is credible. This is because, without evidence, most sports science professionals don’t believe the results.
“We ran an initial exploratory validation study at Wake Forest University testing our markerless pipeline head-to-head against a marker-based [competitor] system,” Robles shares. “We achieved ICC values averaging above 0.98.”
While these statistics changed the conversation overnight, Robles would still have to convince people that the accessible technology was capable of doing things that he and his team said it could through a larger study that is currently in progress.
The future of motion capture
For Eliseo Robles, the future of motion capture isn’t something that’s going to happen within the next few years. Instead, it’s something that’s already happened.
“The implications for sports organizations, physical therapy clinics, and athletic programs that could never afford lab-grade analysis are massive,” Robles says.
In the future, Robles strives for NurivaTech and sportFX.ai to become the standard for accessible biomechanical analysis, not only in pro sports but in high school athletic and youth development programs.
Robles also runs Robles Consulting LLC, where he provides fractional CTO support and has delivered 30+ production systems. While Eliseo Robles has consistently focused on expanding access to technology, his ambitions have been shaped by seeing how opportunity is often limited when the right tools remain out of reach. When challenges have arisen, he has faced them head-on.
“The pattern in my career is the same: find the expensive assumption, challenge it, and build something that works without it,” Robles shares.
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