GPS equipped shoes that will lead you home with LED signals | Hacker News Reader

GPS equipped shoes that will lead you home with LED signals

dominicwilcox.com

76 pointsmxfh20 comments

Sometimes I lament about the lack of creativity shown here (yet another twitter/facebook/ad based company, etc) and say to myself that we, the human race, can and should do much better.

But this is great- a perfect union of technology and fashion to build something that's not just cool, but ubercool, highly desirable, with many applications (say alzeihmer patients?)

When was the last time you got yourself lost in a city and wanted to walk back to where you came from? Sure you can bring out your cellphone or GPS and spend some time typing an address, or use chance and your memory, but what if you could just click your shoes together and they brought you back there?

Wow. It's awesome. I don't know what to say, besides "shut up and take my money" :-)

There is only one drawback for me : you have to input the original gps coordinates with a USB cable. Not good. Something else, like storing coordinates on a cue (jumping twice?) or automatically storing coordinates to take you back to each of your previous stops on your road (say where you spend over 1 minute) would be better.

But even without that feature, and with the ugly red inside that'll certainly turn my socks pink, I'd still buy a pair if I can upload the GPS coordinates by bluetooth :-)

EDIT to add a big thank you to the original author. You made my day.

"Sure you can bring out your cellphone or GPS and spend some time typing an address"

I tried that in the Medina of Marrakech - really didn't help much. We had to resort to the tried and tested approach of asking some of the local youths (who clearly are used to doing this) to guide us back to our hotel for a fairly small fee.

> "storing coordinates on a cue (jumping twice?)"

Jumping twice? No! Three clicks of the heels together, of course! It has the added advantage of being more stereotyped and should be easier to detect.

I had the same thought about Alzheimers sufferers - I know a handful, one quite well.

Alas, part of the challenge of the disease is that you're generally not able to use mental "crutches". E.g. give the person step-by-step instructions, and he misplaces them.

In this case, I'd guess that advanced sufferers would most likely not think to look down at what their shoes were telling them or not be able to interpret what they saw.

Now if there were a gentle way to have the shoes compel walking in a certain direction, you'd have something very useful for this population.

Not sure how alzheimer works, but some memories dont vanish - especially the early ones. I.E. when our generation is stuck by the disease (if no cure has been found) will we forget how to use cell phones or a web browser ??

So early technology exposure could change a lot about how the disease impact life.

Now if such shoes could exist soon, and people could be exposed to them in an early age, yes that would be a real game change about the impact of alzheimer. (if I m correct about how it works)

> Now if there were a gentle way to have the shoes compel walking in a certain direction,..

How about Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation (GVS), demonstrated by NTT in 2005 [1,2]? There's also a GVS implementation using an Arduino [3], so it is ripe for integration, especially given the availability of a GPS shield for the Arduino. An auto-homing human!

[1] http://www.semanticmedia-showcase.de/WerkstattSM/Forschung/S...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlNfBrXYYTc

[3] http://arduino.cc/forum/index.php/topic,21780.0.html

Dave Lister: Sometimes I think it's cruel giving machines a personality. My mate Petersen once brought a pair of shoes with artificial intelligence. Smart Shoes, they were called. It was a neat idea. No matter how blind drunk you were, they would always get you home. Then he got ratted one night in Oslo, and woke up the next morning in Burma. See, the shoes got bored just going from his local to the flat. They wanted to see the world, man, y'know? He had a helluva job getting rid of them. No matter who he sold them to, they'd show up again the next day! He tried to shut them out, but they just kicked the door down, y'know?
Arnold Rimmer: Is this true?
Dave Lister: Yeah! Last thing he heard, they'd sort of, erm, robbed a car and drove it into a canal. They couldn't steer, y'see.
Arnold Rimmer: Really?!

Dave Lister: Yeah. Petersen was really, really blown away by it. He went to see a priest. The priest told him, he said, it was alright, and all that, and the shoes were happy, and they'd gone to heaven. Y'see, it turns out shoes have soles.

-- Red Dwarf, 1988.

When I saw the 'northskirt' the first time I had an idea similar to this one. Vibrate the little buzzer in your phone more aggressively when you're going the wrong way, slowing it down as you are going the right way. Simple, only one 'bit' output needed (you could even tape a slave buzzer to your ankle or so). Instant pigeon sense of direction where-ever you go. No peeking at the screen required. Special signal: three rapid buzzes when you've reached your destination.

I saw a news story about a similar invention, but it had a buzzer in each shoe, and could help blind people know when to make a turn to get to their destination.

cancelbubble, your account was hellbanned 614 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2102219

I always want to say this, but figure that I would get banned as well. Fun.

I love this, such a creative creation - although I'm not much sure I'd wear it, fashionably speaking, but it's a great idea. Setting coordinates via USB isn't the best, it'd be awesome if I could use my smart phone to connect to the shoes and set the GPS coordinates.

a great idea? I guess you mean as art/concept, right? as a product... I can't think of anyone buying it except as a wacky gift, ironic footwear, collecting...

I mean, the "User Experience" of the interface to programming a shoe to highlight directions will be bad, USB won't do, if you could use your smartphone + wifi/bluetooth...why not just look a map in the phone? specially since you'd need to walk looking at your shoes to know where to go...

a practical use: adventure sports, hiking, trekking and the like(they already have to prepare for the thing, configuring the shoes would just be another thing, and it would help their safety)... alzheimer ehhhhhhh, I think not. Alzheimer sufferers probably need more care than just knowing where's their homes, and public health probably wouldn't like the idea of lost alzheimer pacients walking somewhere they don't know where it is guided by shoes and distracted from road/cars/etc

Not great as a product no, but in concept yes. I personally haven't seen anything like this, and I just think a much better job could be done. I agree you could just use your phone if you were able to update GPS coordinates via your phone, but then you have to keep out your phone to know which way to go instead of just looking down at your feet. Off topic, I think something like Google Goggles GPS would be far more interesting.

This is more art, as it is only borderline practical at best.

A shoe with a traditional magnetic compass might be more practical from a usability standpoint.

This makes me miss the trend of wristwatches with compasses embedded in the bands.

I see a large college kid market for this. After the bars.

I feel like the shoes will be telling them to walk in all the directions at once at that point.

Designated shoes.

Requires [some] motor skills to operate.

This could be great for people with Alzheimers, or kids.

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