Dominic Wilcox, british designer, has created a fully functional prototype pair of shoes with a built-in GPS that will guide you home. The name of this extravagant invention is “No Place Like Home” and it’s inspired by the famous novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” in witch the protagonist Dorothy, with her magic shoes, can go everywhere clicking her shoes together three times.
What Can These GPS Shoes Do?
For Wilcox’s shoes, with expertly decorated sole, just beat the heels once. Infact, the shoes can be programmed by connecting to the computer. After uploading your required destination to the shoes with a USB cable, the GPS, which is embedded in the heel, is activated by a heel click. The GPS shoes system is powered by a battery similar to those found in mobile phones.
The GPS shoes communicate with each of them and they have two different utility thanks to the microcontroller called “Arduninos”: the right shoe has a progress bar of lights to show to the wearer how close he is to the destination. Once you arrive at your destination the led will light green. Instead, the left shoes communicates via a ring of LED lights to point in the required direction.
The project, commissioned by the Global Footprint project in Northamptonshire, was exhibited at the London Design Festival 2012.
The uses of these shoes could be very numerous, we can think for example to Alzheimer’s sufferers or to those people who may have the habit of drinking a glass too or even to teenage children that are late at night and don’t want to go home or to the careless wife that continually loses the way.
GPS tracking systems entered fully into our daily and now also in our shoes.