Meet Zenia, an AI that can guide your yoga sessions
What's the story
The fact that hundreds of millions of people practise yoga is enough to explain how critical discipline is for leading a healthy life.
It has grown insanely popular around the world, but the thing is, not everyone has the time or resources to take specialized yoga sessions.
This is where Zenia, an all-new AI-powered Yoga assistant, comes in.
Here's all about it.
Issue
Practising yoga at home has its own problems
Typically, people who don't spend money on specialized yoga sessions practise at home. They use TV sessions or yoga apps to look at how different 'asanas' are performed and try to do them with as much accuracy as possible.
The trick works but people don't realize that they often make errors while trying to mimic the postures, which defeats the purpose of practising yoga.
Issues
Postural errors can lead to physical problems, strains
When a person performs yoga incorrectly, they don't get full benefits from the exercises.
Additionally, sometimes incorrect postures can also harm the body, causing unexpected strains or sprains. You could even suffer from a bone injury that may take days, sometimes even weeks, to heal.
And, the worst part is, if you are practising alone, you won't even know when you're doing it wrong.
Solution
Now, Zenia hopes to tackle all these problems
Zenia, a Russia-based app, is leveraging the power of artificial intelligence to tackle the problems of performing yoga at home and help people be in complete control of the postures.
The app uses neuro networks and computer vision technologies to analyze the movements of a person and then guide them through their postures, correctly and safely - just like a personal yoga assistant.
Practice
How Zenia assists with yoga practice?
Once launched on a phone, Zenia analyzes the way a person performs yoga using the front camera.
The app uses motion tracking to recognize the movements of major joints and then gives real-time comments on the quality of practice.
This means, as you perform, the app continues to provide gentle feedback, including guidance/corrections, by voice to keep the practice safe and effective.
Details
App uses data from thousands of yoga lessons to monitor
Zenia's algorithm have been trained on tens of thousands of images of yoga asanas (under the guidance of professional instructors) to analyze the movement of a person and then guide them in real-time.
The app currently offers 4 guided courses and 14 sequences of different intensity and length to its users. Plus, it even adapts with the pace of the practitioner while monitoring.
Quote
Here's what Aleksei Kurov, Zenia's founder, said about the app
"The main advantage of Zenia is a personalized approach to each student. We aimed to recreate the intimate experience of yoga practice with the instructor," Kurov said, adding that the assistant "recognizes movements of 16 major joints and within seconds gives feedback."
Availability
Currently, Zenia yoga assistant is only available on iOS
Zenia promises to be that yoga assistant you never had for practicing various asanas at home.
The app is free to download but is only available for iOS users at this stage.
Notably, Kurov also stated that the confidentiality of users' data is one of their core values and that the app doesn't save any images or videos from the front camera.