Workout buffs rejoice! Apart from slew of watches that can keep track of their progress, you can now have fitness tracking running shoes to make sure your workout is always on point.
Samsung Electronics spinoff company Salted Venture unveiled IoFit, running shoes that do more than just provide support to your arches and calves while running or exercising. These smart running shoes can get all the statistics and information you need to monitor your workout progress. It makes sense after all, that our feet, which we use the most for exercising, to have all the vital information. "There's so much valuable information coming from our feet, and it's being wasted," Salted Venture CEO Jacob Cho said in a statement. "So, we wanted to make use of this data and utilize it to provide value to people. That was the driving force behind IoFit."
IoFit shoes can do so because they are integrated with accelerometers and pressure sensors to collect details on the users' balance, weight shift, and ground contact force. The shoes can even note the users' location of center of gravity.
Like the more sophisticated and modern fitness tracking watches, these shoes can send the data to a companion app. From the app, users can playback their own workout to determine if their form and stance are correct. If not, they can check if these are negatively affecting their fitness routines and should be changed.
The app also comes equipped with customizable coaching tool that professional coaches or a health buff friend can use to provide comments. Users can even compare their stance to a figure with the ideal stance. "We want to be a platform and a coaching tool for people to use. It's an add-on to the interactive experience between people," Salted Venture COO Sehee Lee said in a statement. "You can't outweigh the benefits that come from a real human-to-human interactive experience."
Samsung itself is looking into the growing market of health buffs. Rumors have it that the company might be expanding their smart watch lineup to add a new fitness tracking smart watch.
