A couple of years ago, we talked about the Le Chal, which is a pair of smartshoes. Le Chal happens to mean “let’s go” in the Hindi language, where it was designed by a certain Anirudh Sharma and his friend, Krispian Lawrence. Sharma himself worked at the MIT Media Lab, and with the help of Krispian Lawrence, they managed to work out all the necessary details to make the Le Chal smartshoes work as they should be – being haptic navigation devices which are capable of connecting to your smartphone.
The premise of the Le Chal smartshoe is not as complicated as you think it is. Basically, you just inform your handset on where you want to go using the loaded app’s voice recognition software, where said app will then fall back on GPS capability in order to plot the course from your existing location. Once you’re on the move, the shoes will vibrate in order to inform you of your next step – literally. The left side vibrates? It is time to turn left, and vice versa for the right. The closer you are to your destination, the more intense the vibrations become. This is definitely a pair of shoes that the visually impaired could make do with, where they would cost approximately $40 to $50, while those who can see will have to fork out $100.
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