At the annual South by Southwest conference in Austin, TX, Google unveiled an early prototype of motion-sensing “smart shoes,” with an embedded speaker on the tongue of the shoe that can shout motivational commands at the wearer when exercising. Google created the talking shoes in collaboration with Adidas, design and ad agency 72andSunny and creative thinkery YesYesNo.
Google told reporters it has no plans to release the shoes but indicated they were part of a thought experiment on on how wearable technology could interact with the human body and with the Internet.
Google said in its marketing copy around the project, By connecting a pair of sneakers to the web, were creating unique opportunities between physical objects and digital ad spaces. Every move the user makes generates data thats captured using an accelerometer, gyroscope and pressure sensors. That data then gets pushed to a web app on your mobile phone and translated in real-time into funny and motivating commentary. That commentary then gets pushed to banners and social media, creating new, interesting content in the digital world from something happening live in the physical one.
The shoe includes an accelerometer, gyroscope and Bluetooth capability to connect to a smartphone and enable the device to measure the wearers activity levels and movement. The speaker on the shoe features 250 pre-recorded phrases to either praise or motivate.
The Smart Shoe unveiling comes as Google is currently running trials of its Google Glass headsets, web-connected augmented reality glasses that overlay digital information onto your surroundings.
