When legendary freediver Terry Maas decided to put his personal time and attention into making the sport he loved safer, he enlisted the help of Inova and a small interdisciplinary team. Over the course of several years, Inova and other specialists have worked with Terry to develop, integrate, test, and implement the necessary building blocks for four generations of this product. Two key aspects of this project were the development of a trigger mechanism and test fixtures.

We worked with Miga Motor to develop a muscle wire motor to move the trigger far enough and with enough force to activate the CO₂ inflator. For the trigger mechanism, the original concept was a gun-style trigger, but with every generation of the product, the client asked for a smaller footprint. By gen 4, our creative development process led us to a trigger concept using a series of tiny balls that tapered within a sleeve.

Other enabling technologies we developed along the way were methods to contain the gas, seal the electronics, add a pressure/temperature sensor, and integrate with the soft goods. Our dev team included:

• Miga Motor (as mentioned above)/Dr. Mark Gummin
• Dave Buntin: electronics
• AOI: manufacturing
• Fuji: manufacturing
• FWU-JIH: die-casting

The CO₂-powered inflator is immune to all environmental water, such as rain and waves, and is operational at up to 60m of depth. Programmable inflation settings allow for deployment to occur at a specific time or depth, bringing the diver to the surface face-up.

As the use case for this product is a life-and-death situation, Terry was insistent on perfection, testing it himself and uncovering any weakness he could find. He also personally tested each unit sold.

Although originally designed to protect freedivers, the freediver recovery vest is now widely used by military, first responders, and big wave surfers: it is recognizable in pictures and videos across multiple industries. Every unit from all four product generations has been sold, and Terry wears the vest himself on his dives.

We have been honored to work on this meaningful project and hope that our contributions continue to make a difference to the freediving community.