Challenge:
Team of 5: How might we improve outdoor recreation?
Solution:
A pressure-sensitive insert to inform runners about their footstrike, helping to prevent injury and provide personalized, quantitative feedback about their running form.
Skills:
Human Factors, Arduino, Soldering, PCB Design, Entrepreneurship.
Individual Contribution:
Project manager, lead designer. Won a pitch competition and continued the project for 1 year after the conclusion of the class.
How might we improve outdoor recreation?
FIRST INSIGHT
Running has a 50% yearly injury rate...
Too high for a non-contact sport.
Why?
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We asked runners, coaches, and podiatrists, and learned that no data exists linking specific running techniques with specific injuries.
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The running industry doesn’t have the tools to affordably measure foot strike dynamics of runners on a large scale.
"My most likely time for injury is in the first 75 miles with a new pair of shoes"
"Runners debate about running form quite often and there are a LOT of opinions."
"I usually run between 400 and 1200 miles before [my shoes] break down."
"Once I've put in 400 miles I switch to a new pair."
"One of the ways I know to change my shoes is if my shins feel tender after a run. I should probably replace them even more..."
"I replace them when they fall apart haha. Probably around 1000 miles."
SECOND INSIGHT
Running shoe mileage has low effect on wear across different runners.
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Why is the industry standard to simply "throw out your shoes after 400 miles" without any more nuance?
Convenience, capitalism, lack of better alternatives.
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THE NEED
Individualized running feedback
The typical advice given to runners is that one must get new shoes after running in them for 400 miles because they lose their cushion after that time. We built a rig to test the shock absorption qualities of sneakers and measured 10 track team shoes from 0 to 5000 miles of wear. We expected to see a steady decline in shock absorption as mileage increased, but our data was all over the place. The team was dejected, worried about the approaching deadline for test data and the efficacy of our rig. But I stepped back and said: “Wait a minute. This is great! These data perfectly demonstrate the problem in the running industry.” Though our shoes were all the same model, they came from different runners, all with unique running techniques. The problem is that the industry advice is too general to be applied to any one runner, so there was a need for something that could deliver individualized running feedback to a single user. The team’s eyes lit up, and we were back in action.
THE SOLUTION
RunRite SmartSole, a pressure sensitive running shoe insert that measures a runner's unique foot strike dynamics.
After many prototypes and iterations, collaborating closely with the Dartmouth Track Team, we created the RunRite SmartSole. The device collects data never before seen in the commercial running industry: real time tracking of the force on different parts of a runner's foot. We got some very interesting results when we compared a shoe that had 200 miles of use vs 400 miles of use: the 400 mile shoe put much more force on the feet, suggesting that it had lost a lot of its shock absorption qualities.
We finished Introduction to Engineering with a prototype, but wanted to continue developing it. I spent the next term applying for scholarships and preparing for The Pitch, an innovation competition in which the winners get funding and support. I won third place in The Pitch, earning $1,000 and development support from the DALI Lab.
click for a video of our 2 minute pitch, starting at 41:00
Our original prototype used a wired Arduino, but we had to build one with Bluetooth capability in order to move forward with development and miniaturization. I found a microprocessor called RFduino, and spent the summer of 2015 building new prototypes and rewriting the code necessary for our new devices to operate.
At the end of summer 2015, we had Bluetooth Capability, but our rig was still too large to be practical, and we didn’t have a way to easily store the information we recorded. So, I learned how to use Eagle (PCB construction software), and began to further miniaturize our device. I also led a team of developers in the DALI Lab to begin working on an iOS app that would interface with the device to store and visualize the data coming from the SmartSole. By the end of fall 2015, we had a working iOS shell and 8 iterations of a printed circuit board.
