EMBEDDED SENSOR SYSTEMS FOR SMART SHOES

Abstract

The wearable technology is a promising field of research that can revolutionize the overall market of clothing. This can be done by giving the customers not just comfort and ease, but also more insight on their day-to-day activities. The reason why these kinds of wearable technologies are being developed is because of the nowadays progress of the machine learning and artificial intelligence. Simply by wearing a piece of clothing, we can be able to receive actual data about the way we walk, run, stand and the state of our current health. The main aim of this thesis is to explore smart shoes and the advancements that are currently being made in this rapidly growing section of wearables. The focus of this work is to create a smart device which will contain electronic chips that can be implemented inside the shoe heel counter. This will require an overall knowledge of different electronic components used such as: microcontroller, wireless interfaces, numerous sensors, and batteries. There are two different ways that we can create and use such devices, active and passive. The main difference between them is that the passive mode does not require the usage of the batteries because it can use passive systems such as RFID tags and SAW sensors (Surface Acoustic Wave). It is in our best interest to use a passive system because by avoiding the need for batteries it can offer more energy-efficient smart shoes and, it would be the best solution for the environment and maintenance reasons compared to those with active systems. Even though there are plenty of reasons to use a passive system, it is most likely that the different companies that will create the smart shoes, will use an active system. This will happen because the number of features that a wearer wishes to have can be restricted by using a passive system, which will finally lead the market towards developing more battery-dependent wearables.