As nice looking as your new pair of Nikes are, they probably don’t have the ability to react to your foot’s movements as if they were alive, do they? The running shoes of the future will.
Developers want to create a running shoe from 3D printed material that will act like a living organism, surrounding your foot, adjusting to your foot’s pressure with every step you take. At London’s Wearable Futures conference, designer Shamees Aden debuted a radical new concept he’s working on that will create a running shoe made of synthetic biological material that has the power to repair itself overnight and would fit around your foot like a second skin.
Aden is joined in the study by University of Southern Denmark professor Martin Hanczyc, and the two of them are experimenting with protocells that could be combined to create an artificial living organism that would respond to pressure and movement, giving a runner 100 percent stability. “As you’re running on different grounds and textures it’s able to inflate or deflate depending on the pressure you put onto it and could help support you as a runner,” Aden tells Dezeen.com.
According to Aden, Caring for your running shoes would simply be placing them in a jar filled with protocell liquid to allow the protocells to repair themselves.
“You would take the trainers home and you would have to care for it as if it was a plant, making sure it has the natural resources needed to rejuvenate the cells.”
Don’t plan on picking up a pair at your local Foot Locker anytime soon though, the researchers don’t envision having a pair ready to hit the market until 2050.