Sam Miller was an all-around athlete growing up. He was also a frequent rehab patient, often frustrated by inefficient equipment and his lack of access to objective performance data as he spent long inefficient hours rehabbing his legs and feet.

Miller’s father, meanwhile, was experimenting with a mechanical training device he originally developed at MIT. He tinkered with the prototype in the family basement for more than a decade.

Sam Miller founded and incorporated Proteus Motion in 2016 to focus on optimizing movement instead of isolating muscles. He developed an intelligent strength training, connected fitness, and rehab tool for athletes based on his father’s then-retired concept.

The initial prototype was engineered with countless rounds of design, testing, and checking physical prototype iterations. Paul Vizzio, Director of Hardware Engineering explains, “Our design was primarily based on what we could do in-house and kind of keep it lean and cheap, but when you design towards that method you can't really scale it.”

By leveraging 3DEXPERIENCE® SOLIDWORKS, the company saved enormous amounts of time and money with digital prototypes, testing hundreds, even thousands of iterations. “Once we adopted the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, it was really a game-changer for us.” Miller continues, “on top of maintaining a network of third-party industrial design firms and a contract manufacturer, having a platform that allowed for collaboration remotely was super important for us. 3DEXPERIENCE provided a really solid solution to accelerate those R&D efforts.”