Date: 2012
Materials: Leather, Micro-processor, GPS, LEDs
Dominic Wilcox has created the world’s first fully functional pair of GPS shoes that will guide the wearer to any destination, no matter where they are in the world. The design of the shoes take the best of traditional craftsmanship and enhance it with a subtle addition of modern technology in the form of embedded GPS in the heel and mini LED lights within the traditional brogue shoe hole perforations.
“I was commissioned by the Global Footprint project in Northamptonshire, a place famous for shoe making, to create some shoes. I decided to make a pair of shoes that can navigate you to anywhere you wish to travel to. I thought about the Wizard of Oz and how Dorothy could click her shoes together to go home. After uploading your required destination to the shoes via a piece of custom made mapping software and a USB cable, the GPS, which is embedded in the heel, is activated by a heel click. It then communicates to the wearer via a ring of LED lights to point in the required direction. The shoe with the GPS wirelessly communicates with the right shoe that has a progress bar of lights to show how close you are to the destination.
In developing these shoes I tried different methods of communicating the direction of travel to the wearer, including vibration, though they just tickled my feet uncomfortably. The simplest and most effective method was to add a circle of mini LED lights that the wearer can just glance down at.”
Dominic Wilcox
