If you are a runner or athlete, chances are you’d like to prevent injury as much as possible. And if you are bound and determined not to conform to the tried and true couch potato method of injury-prevention (seriously couch potato status comes with chocolate, Netflix, and no chance of shin splints; stop making the rest of us look lazy and GIVE IN) you should probably take a look at these RunSafer “smart shoes” currently being developed in Germany:
RunSafer shoes monitor the problems in your gait
There are a few versions of smarter runner shoes such as the US Pegasus Sport Performance, all combining wireless networks, sensor technology, and your always-handy smartphone to find ways to monitor your stride and eventually fix the flaws with your form. Like other such projects, the RunSafter researchers, based at the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, are in the process of building a runner’s shoe with sensors that send data to an app on your smartphone and on to your computer.
RunSafer’s sensors will evidently record data about your foot speed as it hits the ground, the duration of its contact with the ground, your stride length, and it’s orientation in space. They operate on a Bluetooth-based app, but if the shoe is out of Bluetooth range it will also store the data for later. This is a pretty long list of features for a shoe, so developers are still experimenting to improve the technology before it’s finally released to the consumer public.
Once the RunSafer shoes become commercially available, the data it collects from your run enables the accompanying software to calculate the forces working on your foot and provide real-time feedback on your gait. As poor running form can led to injury, the software’s monitoring could prove exceptionally helpful to athletes.
RunSafer is by no means the first or only attempt at creating a healthier running shoe, and is experiencing the same problems of development as other such projects. Mainly, their problem lies in relaying data to the runner, as each person’s body works a little differently and thus there is no “correct” way to run. However, RunSafer developers remain hopeful.
RunSafer has no release date as of yet, but could be available in as near as two years.
Source Discovery News
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