Samsung-backed Salted Venture unveils smart shoes

IoFIT shoe

Samsung’s C-Lab, which helps its employees turn creative ideas into potentially commercial products, has already shown us two interesting mHealth projects — a brainwave-reading wearable and a smart health belt. At the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Korean company will be doing it again with newly announced smart athletic shoes.

Called IoFIT, the product is envisioned by an in-house startup, Salted Venture, sporting a number of built-in pressure sensors to measure your posture, balance and weight distribution. Once collected, these data points are transferred to a companion app from where users and/or their coaches can see how they can up their game, do exercises properly, improve their golf swing, and so on.

“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.”

According to the IoFIT team, the idea to build this sort of a running shoe is based on force plates, equipment used by fitness, rehab and golf facilities to measure athletic performance. Add modern technology to the mix and you get a mobile trainer you can carry around in a pocket.

From a companion app, users and/or their coaches can see how they can up their game, do exercises properly, and so on.In that sense, the companion app allows users to film their workouts and compare the video with the data gathered by the sensors and get actionable information athletes could use to improve their performance. Similarly, with technology like this, coaches will be able to remotely help their students advance.

It all sounds nice, but now Salted Venture is looking for a footwear company partner to bring its technology to the market. And that’s one of the reasons it will be showcasing the IoFIT in Barcelona next week.

IoFIT app

Meanwhile, established sports equipment makers aren’t waiting for Samsung or any other major tech company to enter the digital health market. In fact, Xiaomi already has its own smart shoes developed in partnership with Li Ning, New Balance is working on something similar having launched a Digital Sport division, and chances are Urban Armour, Adidas, ASICS and Nike will join the ride, as well. Those four companies already have digital divisions that were either created in-house or brought in by acquiring mobile services companies…