Smart shoes step up the wearable-computing pace

May 09

CNET - A group of researchers says shoes may be the next thing in the busy field of wearable computers and gesture interfaces.

Computer scientists from the Telekom Innovation Laboratories, the University of Munich, and the University of Toronto this week published a paper on ShoeSense, a wearable computing system for a smartphone.

[...] Developing alternative inputs for smartphones makes sense when a person is moving or engaged in other tasks, such as driving, or when it’s inappropriate to pull out a smartphone, such as during a family dinner, the ShoeSense developers said in a paper.

Its developers envision a sensor being placed in a shoe that is able to understand customizable hand and arm gestures. In a video, a user moves his finger along his forearm to turn up the volume on a music player in his pocket, pinches to select the next track, and then pinches with three fingers to send an “I will be late” e-mail to his wife.

Having a sensor device in a shoe has advantages over glasses in that it allows for eyes-free interaction, and it doesn’t constrain body motions. ShoeSense’s designers also think that it can be more socially acceptable to operate a smartphone through arm and hand gestures than via glasses. Potentially, the sensor could be powered by a walking motion.

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