SmartShoe: Making a Shoe to Take You Home

SmartShoe is the future of wearables. Its unique interaction with the world allows you to be more connected and involved with what's around you.

Winner of the 17-19 2016 Code>Make>Win Physical Computing Award.

Inspiration

I had the idea after losing my way in a car park. I thought, "there should be a way of just knowing the right directions." SmartShoe is what I came up with.

I had a look at some other smart-shoe ideas, most notably the Lechal shoe. You can see my notes about it in my full research. In summary, our ideas are very similar but mine comes in at a fraction of the cost. However, the use of a haptic feedback device instead of LEDs is a consideration that I made very carefully. I think more about this in development.

Development

This shoe has been a long time coming! From an extensive research period came a rigourous build and test procedure of the first prototype.

Reflections

Many things didn't go as planned, and many things did. It's important to focus on the positives. But, just in case you want to see all of my thoughts on the matter, click on to see my full review.