The smart shoe: when technology leaves the machine
Visions of the future at CES 2019 differ. However, they agree on a few points. The main point: things that we have previously accepted as a given will be revisited. Shoe soles, for example.
At CES, loudspeakers buzz from every corner, screens flicker and lights flash. But technology is not what CES in Las Vegas is all about. It's the music of the future that presents you with the unexpected and potentially revolutionary. One of these is the Quant-U project, which is essentially nothing more than an insole for a shoe.
The special thing about it, however, is that the brains behind Quant-U use modern technology to ensure that the sole from the 3D printer is an exact replica of your foot at the top and the shoe at the bottom.
This makes the inventors behind Quant-U a group of people who are proving that technology is leaving the machine world behind. Smart technologies, cloud services and the ongoing individualisation of the world are what CES 2019 is all about. One thing is clear to the start-ups and corporations: new devices are just the beginning.
The connection between shoe and foot
So far, shoe soles have simply been parts that you buy in Migros or the Coop and that then support your foot somewhere or somehow. There are few offshoots of this concept. Expensive insoles from orthopaedists, which you only use when medically necessary. Or soles like Chili Feet, which fulfil a special purpose
Therefore, Quant-U has developed a process that produces a sole from the 3D printer that takes the following aspects into account:
- Your foot
- The shoe
- The intended use of the shoe
An example from the current everyday life of video producer Stephanie Tresch and me: We are at the CES in Las Vegas. We are wearing boots. She Ecco boots, I a pair from Bates. We spend between three and four hours a day walking through the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Centre. We carry around 10kg of luggage in our rucksacks every step of the way.
Shoes are important to us, because otherwise we'd hardly deliver any of these stories to you at the speed and whimsy with which we do. Equipment hacking is part of every trade fair visit and every day at the fair. So if we could now have a pair of boots or a pair of shoes that are not only easy on our feet, but are also optimised for the ground and the walk through the centre... Yes, please.
The practice: stand around for 15 seconds, wait 120 minutes
In practice, the Quant-U project will soon look like this. You go into a shoe shop where an iPad is set up in front of a sensor platform. You choose the shoe in the shop that you like the look of. Then you select it on the iPad. The shoes are stored in as much detail as possible as a 3D model in an app.
The sensor platform scans your foot. Length, width, height and other data are merged with the shoe data. You then put on a demo shoe with sensors in it and do what you will do with the shoe in everyday life. Stephanie and I would simply walk around on flat ground with the sensor shoe and stop and wait every now and then.
The sensors of the Catia system, manufactured by the French company Dassault Systemes, correlates the measured data and adds the findings from other similar feet, shoes and uses.
Towards the end of the process, around two hours later, a 3D printer is fired up to print out a silicone sole that you place in the shoe of your choice. Quant-U wants to prevent you from suffering the long-term consequences of uncomfortable shoes or an incorrect foot position in ten or twenty years' time.
In short: Stephanie and I are very interested. Because if the future brings more comfortable shoes and lets us last longer, then we're in.
You can find all articles about CES 2019 here.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.