The Bionic Running Shoe
Julie
Kay Keefe for The New York Times
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By MICHEL
MARRIOTT
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Julie Kay Keefe
for The New York Times
IN DEVELOPMENT - Mark A. Oleson,
left, and Christian DiBenedetto, the core of a group
that developed the Adidas 1 shoe. |
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Julie Kay Keefe
for The New York Times
Control Center - Clear housing in
the arch of the Adidas 1 running shoe holds a microprocessor
built around a motor unit, along with a battery
that must be replaced after 100 hours. |
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Julie Kay Keefe
for The New York Times
FINE TUNING - The shoe's "user interface"
consists of two buttons that adjust for the runner's
preference for softer or harder cushioning. Five
light-emitting diodes display the setting.
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Julie Kay Keefe
for The New York Times
GETTING IN GEAR - The heel contains
a sensor and magnet to gauge the cushioning needed
and relay the data to the microprocessor; a drive
train running from the motor makes adjustments.
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ORTLAND,
Ore.
SHOES have long been sensible. Now some are getting smart.
Smart enough, that is, to sense their environment electronically,
calculate how best to perform in it, and then instantly alter their
physical properties to adapt to that environment. In short, the
designers say, shoes that can do whatever is needed to deliver improved
athletic performance or just a better experience in the ancient
poetry of feet striking the earth.
"The whole concept of an intelligent shoe would be great," said
Christian DiBenedetto, a scientist here at the North American headquarters
of Adidas. "Something that would change to your different needs
during a marathon, or whatever you were doing, was always the fantasy."
Adidas, the 83-year-old German sporting-goods maker, is about to
turn that fantasy into biomechanical reality in the form of a running
shoe for men and women. Sleek and lightweight despite its battery-powered
sensor, microprocessor and electric motor, the shoe, named 1, is
expected to be in stores by December and will cost $250.
Adidas executives say the shoe is no gadget-dependent gimmick.
Instead, its designers say it represents a leap forward in wearable
technology. Each second, a sensor in the heel can take up to 20,000
readings and the embedded electronic brain can make 10,000 calculations,
directing a tiny electric motor to change the shoe. The goal is
to make the shoe adjust to changing conditions and the runner's
particular style while in use.
"What we have, basically, is the first footwear product that can
change its characteristics in real time," said Mr. DiBenedetto,
who led the group that created the shoe, of its ability to adapt
its cushioning as the wearer runs.
The shoes will have push-button controls, light-emitting diodes
to display settings and an instruction manual on a CD-ROM that will
advise wearers on, among other things, how to change the battery
after every 100 hours of use.
Of all items of clothing, said Rob Enderle, a principal analyst
for the Enderle Group in San Jose, Calif., the shoe is a logical
one to be a focus of wearable technology. Unlike articles of clothing
that must be washed or cleaned, shoes present a more stable place
to add useful electronics, he said.
High-performance shoes, particularly those intended for athletic
use, he said, have been augmented with an array of biomechanical
enhancements, most of them involving compressed gases, shock absorbers
and springs. But until now, he said, "I don't recall electronics
being applied in shoes other than for lights."
From the start of development in early 2001, the shoe was viewed
as an opportunity for Adidas to innovate, said Steve Vincent, who
leads the company's worldwide innovation team of about 50 people.
Mr. DiBenedetto's group is one of seven in Germany, Italy and the
United States that work in such secrecy that the units' names are
not mentioned to outsiders. To do otherwise, Mr. Vincent said from
his corner office overlooking the Willamette River, "would just
give away the farm."
In the hypercompetitive sporting-goods industry, of which the $15
billion sneaker market is only a part, innovation is seen more and
more as a great differentiator. And while other companies, like
Nike
in nearby Beaverton, Ore., have made a name for themselves with
new products, Mr. Vincent acknowledged that Adidas had not established
a firm reputation as an innovator in the American market.
"We look at innovation as the fuel for our company," he said. "We
are committed to deliver at least one new impactful technology or
innovation every year."
Among the first of those products was ClimaCool, a line of athletic
shoes and garments introduced in 2002 that use sophisticated materials
and strategically placed venting to relieve the wearer's heat and
perspiration. Others include a soccer ball that is bonded rather
than hand-sewn for better durability and truer flight, and a shoe
engineered to kick it faster and farther, as well as a swimsuit
that uses computer-assisted design and wind-tunnel testing to take
advantage of fluid dynamics.
The latest creation, and the first to incorporate digital technology,
is the 1 running shoe. Outside the shoe's development group, which
seldom grew beyond seven designers, engineers, researchers and testers,
few people ever saw the shoes as they took shape.
"We used to keep them taped up," said Mark A. Oleson, a 29-year-old
electromechanical engineer, who with Mr. DiBenedetto, 38, formed
the core of the group.
And because Mr. Oleson has a size-9 foot, the size of most shoe
prototypes, he also became its chief tester, running the hallways
of the innovation team's bright, airy building and the lush green
neighborhoods that surround it.
But the challenge was melding a shoe with technology in a new way.
The first thing Mr. DiBenedetto and his group had to learn was
whether there was an ideal range of cushioning for runners. Cushioning
is the shoe's means of smoothly decelerating the runner's foot when
the heel strikes the ground. If the compression is too hard, the
foot slows too quickly and the shock is felt in the runner's knees,
said Mr. DiBenedetto, whose background is in mechanical and aeronautical
engineering. If the cushioning is too soft, the foot "bottoms out,"
he said, striking the ground too hard, also stressing the knees.
Mr. DiBenedetto said he was surprised to learn that no one had
ever precisely measured cushioning compression while a shoe was
in use. To do that, he and Mr. Oleson inserted a sensor about the
size of a sparrow's eye into the top of the heel of a standard Adidas
running shoe, and a magnet smaller than a dime in the bottom of
the heel, creating a magnetic field that the sensor could measure.
As the heel was compressed, the sensor, known as a Hall sensor,
measured the corresponding changes in the magnetic field strength
to a tenth of a millimeter, 1,000 times a second.
To retrieve the data, the group also had to design and build a
data logger to gather and store the information and then transfer
it to a computer for analysis. After much trial and error, the group
had a sensor and data logger small and powerful enough to be snapped
onto the tongue of a sneaker.
During their first months of research, Mr. DiBenedetto and Mr.
Oleson said they taught themselves to make their own circuit boards
and solder components onto them. Mr. DiBenedetto, a former toy maker
and designer of air intake and exhaust systems on highly classified
aircraft projects for Lockheed, said the group began buying and
dissecting motorized toys.
The Hasbro
electronic toy creature known as Furby helped them better understand
the kinds of tiny electric motors and switches they might need for
the shoe. A skinned Furby sat on the edge of a table in Mr. DiBenedetto's
work space.
Once the group had a reliable "sensor shoe," it set a number of
them at various cushioning levels and invited testers to select
the pair of shoes they found most comfortable. Then they ran in
them.
"They'd come back and we'd download the data, and what we started
to see was that everyone was picking a shoe that got them to the
same range of compression," Mr. DiBenedetto recalled.
That led his group to write mathematical language that enabled
the shoe's embedded 20-megahertz computer continually to ensure
that the cushioning was ideal for the runner and the situation.
Next the group faced the issue of how to make a shoe adapt while
it is being worn. The solution was a hollow engineered plastic cushion
with metal support brackets. When the shoe's motor adjusted the
tension on a stainless steel cord that ran through the flexible
heel, the heel responded just the way Mr. DiBenedetto and Mr. Oleson
wanted.
Mr. Enderle, the analyst, predicted that even at $250 a pair,
shoes that use digital technology effectively are likely to find
a market. Fortunately for Adidas, he said, "a lot of people who
run - business executives and the rest - do have the money and love
having the latest cutting-edge shoe that apply technology to make
the running experience better."
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