There are prototypes and then there's the Smartshoe 001. It's big, it's bulky, it's a bit of an eye-sore, and Zhor-Tech is pretty convinced that it's the future of footwear as we know it. As a rep from the company put it to my, "the shoe hasn't changed much in the past 50 years." At the very least, the Smartshoe 001 is nothing if not a change.
These days the company is better known for its smart insoles, which bring things like heating and step count when you slip them inside a pair of shoes. Now the company is just going for broke, desining a handful of shoes it expects to arrive before year's end. Most of the other pairs the company had on-hand were pretty normal looking shoes.
And then there's the Smartshoe 001.
The shoes has some fairly sensible features on-board: step counting, insole heating - things the company provided with its previous products. On the bottom is a contact point that allows for inductive charging - which makes a heck of a lot more sense than actually plugging the shoes in.
And then they went all Marty McFly on use, with auto-tightening. There's really where the design gets a bit crazy with hydraulics and the like. Sadly, the prototypes don't have the functionality yet.
The company is optimistically aiming to release the shoe's before year's end, with a price of $450. But that's the price we have to pay to live in the future, right.
