Lechal Haptic Footwear Guides You By Buzzing Your Feet

Zothecula writes "Three years ago, we heard about a prototype shoe that could be used to guide the wearer via haptic feedback. Designed by Anirudh Sharma, who was then a researcher at Hewlett-Packard Labs in Bangalore, India, the Lechal shoe was intended for use mainly by the blind. This week, however, Sharma and business partner Krispian Lawrence announced that the production version of the Lechal will soon be available for preorder, and it's aimed at helping all people navigate the city streets." Sensor-laden shoe computers aren't a new idea; in the past, they've just been put to different purposes (PDF).

Comments

Or haptic cycling clothes

[MichaelSmith]

Linked to a lidar system so I can feel what is behind me.

Re:Or haptic cycling clothes

[davester666]

Just imagine the beat-down you would get by the TSA trying to go through airport security.

Re:Or haptic cycling clothes

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine the beat-down you would get by the TSA trying to go through airport security.

If you had haptic clothing, you could have a TSA beat-down anytime you liked.

Re:Or haptic cycling clothes

[Anonymous Coward]

Just imagine the beat-down you would get by the TSA trying to go through airport security.

If you had haptic clothing, you could have a TSA beat-down anytime you liked.

Just had a vision of haptic underwear and the possibilities..........

Re:Or haptic cycling clothes

[MichaelSmith]

There are networked sex toys right now.

Re:Or haptic cycling clothes

[Anonymous Coward]

[Citation needed]

No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife tells me where to go all the time. I don't need my shoes doing it...

Re:No thanks

[oscrivellodds]

I used to use a male voice on the GPS in my car because the female voices reminded me too much of my wife telling me where to go. That was when I was using an aftermarket Garmin unit. My current vehicle has built in GPS and unfortunately has only one female voice. Fortunately, it is a relatively pleasant voice, not exactly pillow-talky, but acceptable, and it never gets upset because I missed a turn.

Re:No thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

you need your wife's shoes to be telling her to tell you to go where you already want to go.

yeah, annoying as fuck, but that's wives.

Malware

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't wait for the first stories of the places people get sent...

Re:Malware

[Anonymous Coward]

Muggers are gonna get fat and lazy if they can lure idiots into dark alleys so easily.

Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen this concept somewhere before... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065566/

Re:Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta love Dean Higgins!

Oblig Red Dwarf

[khasim]

Lister: Sometimes, I think it's cruel giving machines a personality. My mate Petersen once bought 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 could always get you home. But he got rattled one night in Oslo and woke up the next morning in Burma. You see, his shoes got bored going from his local to his flat. They wanted to see the world, you know. He had a hell of a 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.
Rimmer: Is this true?
Lister: Yeah. The last thing I heard, they sort of... robbed a car and drove it into a canal. They couldn't steer, you see.
Rimmer: Really?
Lister: Yeah. Petersen was really, really blown away about it. He went to see a priest. The priest told him... he said it was alright and all that, when shoes are happy that they'd get into heaven. You see, it turns out shoes have 'soles'.
Rimmer: Ah, what a sad story. Wait a minute.
[Thinks for a minute]
Rimmer: How did they open the car door?

Re:Oblig Red Dwarf

[oscrivellodds]

Not really related to the subject, but a similarly strange/amusing story from Naked Lunch:
Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I had ever heard. This asshole talk had sort of a gut frequency. It hit you right down there like you gotta go. You know when the old colon gives you the elbow and it feels sorta cold inside, and you know all you have to do is turn loose? Well this talking hit you right down there, a bubbly, thick stagnant sound, a sound you could smell. This man worked for a carnival you dig, and to start with it was like a novelty ventriliquist act. Real funny, too, at first. He had a number he called The Better Ole that was a scream, I tell you. I forget most of it but it was clever. Like, "Oh I say, are you still down there, old thing?" "Nah I had to go relieve myself." After a while the asshole started talking on its own. He would go in without anything prepared and his asshole would ad-lib and toss the gags back at him every time. Then it developed sort of teeth-like little raspy in-curving hooks and start eating. He thought this was cute at first and built an act around it, but the asshole would eat its way through his pants and start talking on the street, shouting out it wanted equal rights. It would get drunk, too, and have crying jags nobody loved it and it wanted to be kissed same as any other mouth. Finally it talked all the time day and night, you could hear him for blocks screaming at it to shut up, and beating it with his fist, and sticking candles up it, but nothing did any good and the asshole said to him, "It is you who will shut up in the end. Not me. Because we dont need you around here any more. I can talk and eat AND shit." After that he began waking up in the morning with a transparent jelly like a tadpoles tail all over his mouth. This jelly was what the scientists call un-D.T., Undifferentiated Tissue, which can grow into any kind of flesh on the human body. He would tear it off his mouth and the pieces would stick to his hands like burning gasoline jelly and grow there, grow anywhere on him a glob of it fell. So finally his mouth sealed over, and the whole head would have have amputated spontaneous - except for the EYES you dig. Thats one thing the asshole COULDN'T do was see. It needed the eyes. But nerve connections were blocked and infiltrated and atrophied so the brain couldnt give orders any more. It was trapped in the skull, sealed off. For a while you could see the silent, helpless suffering of the brain behind the eyes, then finally the brain must have died, because the eyes WENT OUT, and there was no more feeling in them than a crabs eyes on the end of a stalk.

Re:Oblig Red Dwarf

[PJ6]

Back in high school, someone at our table in the caf would read a single, random page out of The Naked Lunch while we ate.

I heard that particular page read just after the infamous fetal pig intestine fight in biology.

That was an awesome, fucked up day.

Re:I can see it now

[Anonymous Coward]

how can you see it if it's subliminal?

Anyone else read that as "Lethal Haptic Footwear"?

[Gravis Zero]

but would it buzz you to death or just lead you into traffic?

Re:I can see it now

[davester666]

through flashbacks.

I suppose we have to remove these before flying?

[elucido]

Because I can't see these kinds of shoes being the type we could wear on airplanes.

Re:I suppose we have to remove these before flying

[freeze128]

Also, wear them into a casino, and get beaten up in a back room for cheating.

Moon Walking

[Anonymous Coward]

Can these shoes make an uncoordinated nerd like me dance like Michael Jackson? I might be interested.

DAE read "Lethal" at first?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm like, well who would wear those?

Re:I suppose we have to remove these before flying

[Technogala]

I agree with you