Smart Footwear Brings Users’ Feet to Life In A Virtual Reality World
After
experimenting with a few microprocessors and sensors underneath a shoe insole, Guard wrote a simple program. The prototype ended up “emulating the movement keys” for PC games on a keyboard, allowing users to see their feet in the virtual environment and move more intuitively.
In the summer of 2016, he founded Brilliant Sole to take the product to market.
“We’re looking to work with both lower and higher-end VR products by putting your feet in virtual reality. Our system incorporates vibration motors in addition to measuring the force and motion of your feet. Everything is embedded in the shoe insole,” says Guard, who previously founded a payment startup.
The hardware charges wirelessly and offers a two-way communication system for developers to input data and customize the movement profiles. Embedded sensors track the foot’s force at specific pressure points to allow users to walk in place or in whatever direction they want to go, and two haptic motors help the user ‘feel’ the ground beneath them.
Guard and his team already have customers and will really enter the market in early 2019 with a crowdfunding campaign for direct-to-customer pre-orders model.
The Wilmington, North Carolina-based startup recently received a small investment from the Wilmington Angels for Local Entrepreneurs group, after bootstrapping to this point. This investment kicked off fundraising for the team as they’re currently raising a $500,000 seed round.
Guard and his team are preparing to present the demo at the 2019 Consumer Electronic Show after being selected through a CES Unveiled event.
See the full story here: https://hypepotamus.com/companies/brilliant-sole/