About the Tonal Research Lab

The Tonal Research Lab works at the intersection of artificial intelligence, computer vision, and biomechanics to advance the science of how people move and perform.

What we do

Human movement contains an extraordinary amount of information. We study how patterns of motion and performance can reveal technique, capability, fatigue, adaptation, and progress. Our aim is to convert these signals into movement intelligence: a deeper, more useful understanding of the individual that can support smarter training decisions and personalized guidance.

Areas of research include:
Computer Vision: Multi-camera pose fusion, motion and form classification.
Multimodal Sensor Foundation Models: Foundation modeling on motion, pose, and textual data. Fatigue and injury detection.
Coaching and Skill Acquisition: How and when to give feedback for optimal performance improvement.

Inside the lab

A purpose-built motion capture laboratory at our San Francisco headquarters: a Tonal trainer at the center of a twenty-camera Vicon rig, twelve optical cameras tracking motion at 120Hz and eight synchronized video cameras, over force plates that measure every ground reaction. We run marker-based and markerless capture side by side, and it is where our volunteer data collection sessions happen.

The lab is where we produce ground truth. It validates what the trainer's sensors measure, benchmarks our pose estimation, and feeds biomechanical simulations that generate synthetic data for training our models. The fleet gives us scale; the lab gives us truth.

Our lab instrument is the Tonal trainer itself: a precision strength machine in hundreds of thousands of homes, measuring cable force and position at 50Hz on every rep, streaming real-time video for pose estimation, and syncing with heart rate monitors and wearables. Together they produce the world's largest strength physiology dataset.

The Team

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  Josh Shapiro

  Head of Applied Research. Directs the research agenda and studies what millions of repetitions reveal.

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  Lauren Benson, PhD

  Leads the Research Seminar and the motion capture laboratory, where ground-truth data is collected.

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  Amery Cong

  AI Scientist in perception and human motion. Leads the Journal Club on current research literature.

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  Steven Hirsch, PhD

  Biomechanist and Senior Manager of Sensors & Intelligence, leading strength physiology research.

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  Giuseppe Barbalinardo, PhD

  VP of Data Science & AI. Physicist by training, focused on human performance and applied research.