If you’re still wearing plain old sneakers, Samsung wants to put a stop to that. The company is about to launch a new brand of smart athletic shoes called IoFIT from its in-house startup, Salted Venture. The shoe comes with numerous pressure sensors that measure your posture, balance and weight distribution. An app then crunches the data to help you improve your athletic performance in sports like weightlifting, golf and running. “There’s so much valuable information coming from our feet, and it’s being wasted,” says Salted Venture CEO Jacob Cho.
Samsung launched Salted Venture and two other in-house companies from C-Labs, a program that helps employees develop their ideas into new businesses. The IoFIT team said they based their idea on force plates, equipment used by fitness, rehab and golf facilities to measure athletic performance. The company isn’t the first to come up with the idea, as Xiaomi is reportedly working on a similar concept.
However, the company is focused on the coaching possibilities of the shoe, not just athletic tracking. By filming a workout, you can compare video with an overlay of the shoe data, showing if your weight is too much to one side during squats, for instance. That can help athletes monitor their own performance or let their coaches do it remotely.
Samsung’s startup hasn’t said when it’s launching the shoe or how much it will cost. However, it’s planning on demonstrating the tech at Mobile World Conference (MWC) in Barcelona next week and will be speaking to other shoe companies who may be interested. It said it also stressed style with the IoFIT and wants users “to feel proud when they wear our shoes in public,” according to a marketing rep. We’ll be there next week to give a look, of course, and we’re sure Samsung will get all the feedback it needs.
Via: TNW
Source: Samsung
