Flex Sole
Towards the end of my senior year I came up with the idea of having an shoe which you could adjust the stiffness of the sole. The idea first came to mind while I was working one night at REI and had multiple people asking for shoes that they could wear to do short triathalons, and didn't want to have to buy bike shoes. Most people either wear their running shoes on their bike or switch shoes when they transition from cycling to running. My idea is to have a series of plates in the sole of a shoe which can be tightened in reference to each other so that when the plates are tight against each other they create a stiff shoe and when they are loose they create a soft shoe. This way you can have a stiff shoe for cycling and a soft shoe for running. This could also be very applicable for casual cyclist who ride to work and don't want to bring an extra pair of shoes, you could simply make your shoe more flexible when you arrive at work and be comfortable walking around. The more I think about this idea the more areas I think that it can be applicable. I have had some initial interest from BOA technologies to be the tightened mechanism for the plates, but the main pursuit of this product has been mostly put aside except for the occasional weekend when I work on the CAD or research in potential markets. Below is a simple flyer I made to show the idea.
