Last night a phone shoe saved my life…
Now here’s a new way to use a phone – with your feet. Aussie inventor, Dr. Paul Gardner-Stephen has created a phone that sits in the heel of one of your shoes. So instead of fumbling around to find your phone in your bag, just slip off your shoe and flip the heel. Dr. Paul is frequently seen around his campus in Flinders University, Adalaide doing just that. And the phone has proved so popular that Dr. Paul is thinking of starting selling them online this year.
As soon as you attach a Bluetooth headset, it’ll be a whole lot more viable and a great place to hide a phone from thieves!
But apart from being a cool accessory, Dr Gardner-Stephen’s thought of how it can be used for the good of humankind. He is confident that his phone in a shoe (I’m sure there’ll be a nice catchy name soon – perhaps a “shone” or a “phoo”?), could be used to monitor patients’ vital stats such as blood pressure and pulse via a bluetooth device which will sit in the other heel. The info can then be automatically sent through to doctors wiithout the patients having to come into hospital.
It will also be used to tell emergency workers when a patient has had a fall by monitoring shocks and orientation changes. The shoe will then automatically call emergency services and put the whole conversation on speakerphone so that the patient can communicate when they’re in trouble.
So why house this genius idea in a shoe?
“Shoes are well accepted by most people, and are simple to put on and take off.”
But that’s not all of it…they’re also ideal for charging the device as “our feet, and therefore our shoes, conduct large forces as we stand and walk, and energy can be harvested to charge the device during ordinary activity.”
So it can all be recharged by walking or even standing still – now that’s my kind of gadget!
Check out the doctor’s demo:
Tags: adalaide, australia, dr. paul gardner-stephen, engineering, finders university, Gadget Watch, mobile phone, mobile shoe, phone shoe
Blog posted on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009 at 3:14 pm under Mobile Phones, gadgets. Leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.
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Al Says:
March 23rd, 2009 at 11:46 am
What’s better than only having to take off your shoe to take a call?! What great ranging opportunities there are for this product too, such as a line of waterproof socks. The next big step in the line could be video shoes, streaming video from a camera on the top of your head to a screen on the top of your shoes so there’s no need to look up at all when walking along! Aside from that, what better way to know you’ve got muck on the bottom of your shoe than to smear it all over one side of your face?! This is an especially significant innovation for doctors, of course, to whom hygiene is of the utmost importance. Also a great way to keep calls short if you’re on pay-as-you-go. I think Garner-Stephen should follow this up with a “feet-free” device with a microphone in one’s big toe, all you’d to do is get your foot in your mouth. I can’t wait to start getting the benefits from the shoe phone and you shoe-dn’t either! You can acheive some of these great benefits by following these simple steps each morning before starting your day:
1. Go outside and smear one side of your face with whatever you can find from the floor
2. Dip one of your socks in the sink before putting it on
3. Keep one shoe’s laces undone ready for those important calls that can’t wait for all that unlacing fuss!