Wear these sandals and unleash the explorer in you. This e-footwear uses the simple mantra: get lost and discover your city!
The LEDs and the vibrator fitted in them guide you every step of the way. Its inventor is Prayas Abhinav, a 27-year-old geek from Sanjaynagar. Here’s why he designed this footwear, that he has named Bhatka Bhatka: “I wanted to make whimsical products that give you an element of fun and of course, which are not useful.”
BLINKS & VIBRATIONS
The sandals are fitted with an Arduino microcontroller board with a program burnt on it and driven by a software written in Java. The locations in the city are characterised. The LEDs are programmed to blink in certain patterns to lead the way. Prayas explains, “When you are in a known place, a red light blinks; when in a known neighborhood, a blue light blinks. When it turns green you know for sure that you are in an unknown place.”
Here’s how the vibrator in the footwear works. “When you start moving towards a known place again, it vibrates in such a manner that is forces you to change your direction and move towards a place you have not discovered. The vibration is so strong that you may feel that someone is hitting your leg with a hammer.”
Prayas prepared the algorithms and gave them to software engineers to design the technology. These sandals were put together in a month’s time. They look like your normal sandals and are light weight.
The sandals are rechargeable and can last for eight hours at a time. If you keep the vibrator switch on for a long time, the battery may shut down after two hours. Prayas has also prepared a fun ad film to promote Bhatka Bhatka.
AFFORDABLE
The price of these shoes is not fixed. But the mode of payment for those who cannot afford them is unique. For those who cannot pay for the shoes entirely through cash, Prayas says, “You can pay a minimum amount through cash and the rest you can pay through kind. You can either offer dinner or coffee to me or give away old books also if you wish.” He wants to make ‘social currency’ the trend to minimise the use of money.
The Bhatka Bhatka footwear will be on display at the Geetanjali Dang exhibition in Delhi in about a month’s time. Prayas envisages these sandals as a form of urban gaming. “Urban exploration itself can become a game,” he says. He also has plans to connect the shoes with blue tooth, which can be later connected to the computer.
A few months down the line, Prayas hopes to bring out shoes that lead you to all the silent places in the city. He has also formed a brand for these shoes known as the Talk Company. This footwear will come with noise sensors. A map on the server will guide people wearing the footwear to silent places.
How this footwear helps you explore
When you are in a known place, the LED on the sandals blinks red; when in a known neighborhood, a blue light blinks. When it turns green you know for sure that you are in an unknown place.
When you start moving towards a known place again, the vibrator in the sandals vibrates in such a manner that is forces you to change your direction and move towards a place you have not discovered. The vibration is so strong that you may feel that someone is hitting your leg with a hammer.
