This Smart Shoe Will Enhance Your Gaming Or Tell You More About Your Health
With many questioning personal fitness tracker viability, Boogio by REFLX Labs is a literal leap in wearable tech. It is, essentially, a sensor that uses your feet as a controller. As reported by Polygon, Boogio uses in-sole pressure sensors and an accelerometer clip to measure your balance, gravitational force and 3D acceleration for each foot. With this data, Boogio can see exactly how fast you are walking, where you are leaning, and even how much weight you’re putting on each foot. It can then communicate with any Bluetooth-enabled device such as a phone or computer. This new advanced sensor will impact not only the future of gaming and virtual reality, but also the future of gamification. Promised to ship in 2015, Boogio offers many exciting opportunities:
Gamified fitness apps can get more accurate data about what you’re actually doing – no more pedometers that simply guess at how many steps you took. With the data from Boogio, fitness apps can even make sure that you’re performing certain exercises correctly. This is already done with fitness peripherals like the Wii Fit balance board, but, unlike existing peripherals, Boogio can go with you to the gym.
Physical therapy gamification can benefit in much the same way that fitness apps can. If you need to re-learn balance and correct walking biomechanics after an injury, Boogio can give you and your physical therapist exact information on how you’re standing and how to improve your stance. This can help you practice physical therapy exercises correctly at home, which speeds up recovery time.
Immersive input provided by the Boogio can be applied to other gamified systems as well. For example, at Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) REFLX Labs showed how you could navigate a PowerPoint presentation by shifting your weight. While it might seem useful for public speakers, this more immersive input can also be used to help serious games and gamified systems work better, particularly if they utilize the 3D space.
