BARCELONA, March 6 — These boots were made for talking, or at least for sending and receiving short messages without using your hands.
Inspired by Morse code, the smart safety shoe was designed to improve worker safety in isolated or noisy workplaces, such oil platforms.
“There are two sensors; one outside here that you can use with your finger to send some signals, and one inside here that you can use with your toe to send some signals especially if your arms are broken or in case of danger and you want to send some signals then you use your feet,” Mathieu Destrian, founder and CEO of Intellinium said.
Tapping your big toe against the sensor in the toe-cap makes dots and dashes that translate to a number of predefined messages.
“The type of message that we are sending is very simple, so based on a kind of Morse code. So it has a smaller throughput, so very light information. So we have a long lasting battery from one month to three months,” Jean-Francois Pinson from Sierra Wireless said.
It has other safety features too, like sending a “mayday” alert in case of injury.
“If you are unconscious, if you don’t move or man-down for instance, the shoe can detect that you do not move any more. It will try to wake up you with vibration here and here. If you do not answer with vibration then a signal will come out to other colleagues close to your place or to your employer,” Destrian said.
Built-in sensors detect falls or shocks, quickly alerting colleagues to the worker’s location.
The developers are now working with a number of companies to refine and test their smart shoe across a range of industries. — Reuters
