OP-based motion capture startup DARI Motion sells to Omaha firm

DARI Motion, an Overland Park-based startup that created a motion capture platform that provides biomechanical analysis of athletes, patients and more, recently was acquired by a Nebraska firm.

DARI, which stands for Dynamic Athletic Research Institute, was purchased for an undisclosed amount by Omaha-based Scientific Analytics Inc. With the acquisition, the firm aims to transform how people understand their body in motion by using bio-mechanical analytics, said Todd Gleason, CEO of Scientific Analytics.

“We know every person has their own unique movement signature, and we know movement can signal injury and performance indicators,” Gleason said. “The more people know and understand how they move, the healthier that movement – and they – can be.”

DARI created a motion capture system that analyzes a person’s force, angle of movement and velocity via a five-minute scan. Rather than placing reflective markers on the athlete’s or patient’s body, the markerless system uses eight high-speed cameras and a computer-vision engine to capture 3-D kinetic movement at all speeds and from all angles.

The firm’s verticals include professional and collegiate athletics, corporate wellness, military performance and patient wellness. DARI’s tech is used by such institutions as Cerner, the Baltimore Ravens, Notre Dame University and more.

Scientific Analytics began working with DARI’s tech in 2015 and launched a partnership in 2016, Gleason said. After a fruitful two-year partnership, Scientific Analytics decided to purchase the firm and its assets, creating a new team of 25 people. The merged company will use the name Scientific Analytics.

The acquisition has been a solid success and will fuel the tech’s expansion around the world, said DARI co-founder Patrick Moodie.

“It was exactly what we needed to continually prosper as a technology,” Moodie said. “It’s important to understand that while the technology of DARI did revolutionize an industry, without SAI’s leadership, DARI would have struggled to scale properly as a business. Because of this move, the future is bigger and brighter than it ever has been, and that’s really exciting. The DARI technology under SAI now has a real path to be a global brand leader in motion health.”

Check out DARI’s tech in action below.