Shoes that think on your feet

Wherever my feet take me… the adventurous and free-spirited love to say this. Now think of a destination and imagine telling your feet to take you there. Lechal, a brand of interactive footwear from the Secunderabad-based Ducere Technologies, does exactly that.

Derived from the Hindi le chal , or ‘take me there’, the interactive pair costs $100. It uses haptics, a technology that relies on the sense of touch, and a smartphone app paired via Bluetooth to guide the wearer by vibrating. Need to turn left? There is a buzz towards the left of the foot. Straight? The tips of the feet vibrate. To indicate distance, the footwear vibrates at specific intervals, and for just a little longer as one nears the objective up ahead (a turn, a different direction). Lechal was first designed for the visually impaired but the innovators, Ducere founders Krispian Lawrence and Anirudh Sharma, soon realised it was for everybody.

Will the vibration end up startling the wearer? “It’s as gentle as a tap on the shoulder. If someone taps you on the left, you’ll turn that way… this is similar. It’s very intuitive and there’s really nothing to ‘get used to’,” says Lawrence.

It can help with fitness and navigation, so Ducere started developing it as a fashion accessory. Lechal can be used to set fitness goals and customise workouts. It counts steps and tracks calories burnt. It can also tell you how many more calories may be burned by an alternative route, and whether you should speed up or slow down to meet your fitness goal. You can tag locations, set destinations and control navigation all through simple gestures of the foot. The pods in the footwear containing the electronic components and battery withstand up to 500 kg, he says.

How can a visually impaired person use the phone? Just touching the phone starts up the app, and it accepts voice commands. The volume button controls the app. It will work outdoors, in any region that has been mapped, says Lawrence, adding that they use the Google Maps API.

The company will take pre-orders through its website from March 7 and hopes to start shipping within three months from that date. At present, in-soles that can be worn inside footwear are ready. The in-soles can be washed after removing the pods. A pair will cost about ₹600. The company is working out the terms of the warranty.

It has tied up with the LV Prasad Eye Institute in Hyderabad to bring down the cost of the footwear. For every pair of signature red shoes that Lechal sells, it will subsidise the cost of another pair for a visually challenged person. A special edition containing an obstacle identification sensor has been created for the visually challenged. “The subsidy will be between 30 and 50 per cent to begin with, but the ambition is to make it available to them for $1,” says Lawrence. That’s clearly a worthy direction taken by this intelligent footwear.

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