CabBoots
Shoes with an Integrated Navigation System

'Martin Frey Martin Frey

CabBoots is a concept for an innovative interface with a pedestrian navigation system. The information transmission process can be perceived tactilely, is intuitively understandable, and is applied to the part of the body most directly involved in the act of walking: the foot. The applied communications metaphor is familiar to all; it’s something that everyone who’s ever walked along a well-trodden path is aware of. It functions astoundingly well in this new application.

Conventional navigational devices normally communicate with the user on the acoustic and visual levels. CabBoots pursues a more intuitive mode of information delivery: the feedback is tactilely perceptible. Here, CabBoots utilizes the faculty of kinesthetic perception present in the entire foot and ankle, and thus takes advantage of a simple principle that everyone absorbs as part of the process of learning to walk.

Paths on a natural surface-soil, for instance-usually have a concave cross-section. When you walk along such a well-trodden path, your feet come down on a flat surface only right in the middle of the trail. Veering over to the edge of the path, they land on a slight outward slope that causes the ankle to be angulated slightly. While walking, the body registers this angulation and intuitively compensates by steering back towards the middle. This actually allows you to walk the path “blind.”
Electromechanical elements in the sole of the CabBoots can produce an artificial angulation of the shoes and, thereby, of the foot. The resulting oblique posture of the foot is difficult to distinguish from the real thing. Individual and virtual paths can thus be communicated via the shoe. Tests with a prototype have shown that the principle of walking a well-trodden path also functions on a virtually-generated topography. A decisive advantage accrues from the intuitive perception of the directions given: channels of communication like seeing and hearing are not involved and thus remain available to receive stimuli from other sources.

In the initial prototype, tiny flaps were used to generate the path. In future models, it would be preferable to replace them with pneumatic activators or ones based on electrorheological fluids. The software to determine the wearer’s position and calculate the subsequent path could run on a mobile device like a cell phone or PDA that can communicate wirelessly with the shoe. Needless to say, CabBoots could also be a great help to people with visual impairments.

Translated from German by Mel Greenwald