Google Shows Off Talking Shoes at SXSW

Google Shows Off Talking Shoes at SXSW

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At the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) conference held in Austin, US, Google showed off an unlikely tech product -- a pair of talking shoes. The tech was built onto the tongue of an Adidas sneaker, and contains an accelerometer, gyroscope, pressure sensor, Bluetooth and a speaker. The Android powered shoe uses the tech on board to learn about the wearer's movements, and then "talks" to the user based on what it thinks the wearer is doing. It does this by sending the collected data via Bluetooth to your phone, which then sends the data into the cloud for processing. The processed and translated data then returns to the shoe in the form of funny and (or) sarcastic comments. 

The talking shoe is the product of a collaboration between New York interactive firm, YesYesNo, design firm, Studio 5050 and Google. It's part of a group of experiments from Google's new initiative called Art, Copy and Code, which seeks to shape the future of marketing and advertising by harnessing the power of the web. For those who are interested in getting a pair of the beautifully designed Adidas high-top sneakers, you're out of luck as Google currently insists that there are no plans to actually sell talking shoes. 

By connecting a pair of sneakers to the web, we’re creating unique opportunities between physical objects and digital ad spaces. Every move the user makes generates data that’s 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.

Source: Art Copy & Code (Google), via Android Community