Electronic Footwear Haptic Navigation With RF Collision Warning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing footwear technologies lack advanced automated features for pedestrian safety, collision avoidance, and navigation assistance, particularly in environments where direct line-of-sight sensing is limited or obstructed.
Innovation Solution
Intelligent electronic footwear (IES) equipped with detection tags and communication modules that enable wireless interaction with infrastructure, vehicles, and other IES, providing automated tactile, audio, and visual feedback for collision avoidance and navigation guidance.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If traditional footwear without electronic components is used, then the footwear maintains simplicity and low cost, but it lacks automated safety and navigation features
Solution Approach 1:
The patent embeds electronic components (detection tags, processors, communication modules) within the footwear structure, nesting them in the sole and upper portions. This allows the complex electronic system to be integrated into the footwear without significantly increasing external dimensions or visual complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The footwear system performs multiple functions: navigation guidance, collision avoidance, fall detection, and communication with external devices. The same electronic platform supports various safety and navigation features, making the complex system versatile rather than specialized for a single function.
2Reliability
If detection tags and communication modules are added to footwear, then collision avoidance and navigation assistance are enabled, but energy consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The detection tags and sensors operate periodically rather than continuously, activating at specific intervals or upon detecting specific conditions (such as approach to intersections or detection of potential hazards). This reduces overall energy consumption while maintaining reliable collision avoidance capability.
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses passive detection tags that can be energized by incoming signals from infrastructure, reducing the need for high-power active transmission. The footwear system serves itself by utilizing external infrastructure signals for detection and confirmation, minimizing its own energy expenditure.
3Ease of operation
If automated feedback systems are integrated into footwear, then navigation assistance is improved, but the footwear becomes more difficult to manufacture
Solution Approach 1:
The footwear system is divided into separate modular components: detection tags, processing units, communication modules, and feedback mechanisms. This segmentation allows each component to be manufactured and tested independently, then assembled into the final footwear product, simplifying the overall manufacturing process despite the system's complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent employs intermediate processing layers and communication protocols that standardize the interaction between different components. This intermediary approach facilitates manufacturing by providing clear interfaces and communication standards between modules, reducing integration complexity.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Enhances pedestrian safety by preventing collisions through advanced warning systems and provides effective navigation assistance using automated tactile, audio, and visual cues.
Implementation Method 1
An IES detection tag may reply to the incoming prompt signal, which may have an RF power with a first frequency, by retransmitting the incoming signal as a transparent output signal, which may have an RF power with a second frequency
Data Source
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AI summary
Presented are intelligent electronic footwear and apparel with controller-automated features, methods for making/operating such footwear and apparel, and control systems for executing automated features of such footwear and apparel. A method for operating an intelligent electronic shoe (IES) includes receiving, e.g., via a controller through a wireless communications device from a GPS satellite service, location data of a user. The controller also receives, e.g., from a backend server-class computer or other remote computing node, location data for a target object or site, such as a virtual shoe hidden at a virtual spot. The controller retrieves or predicts path plan data including a derived route for traversing from the user's location to the target's location within a geographic area. The controller then transmits command signals to a navigation alert system mounted to the IES's shoe structure to output visual, audio, and/or tactile cues that guide the user along the derived route.