Adidas goes for Augmented Reality based Shoe

"The foundation of AugmentedReality lies in adding a layer to the real world" says Chris Barbour/Head-Digital Marketing, Adidas Originals. Adidas has recently launched a virtual 3-D world. Users need to sign into Adidas site with their sneakers, which in turn possess a code within its tongue, in front of webcam. Once this action is successfully done, a virtual world appears in front of users, making them capable of navigating through the virtual world, with sneaker as controlling device. According to Chris Barbour/Head-Digital Marketing, Adidas Originals, "We have taken a real world item and added a fantastic world on the top of that". Barbour join hands with Adidas to make this Augmented Reality virtual world come true. According to Barbour, "We are not trying to mimic a real-world look, we have more stylish pop-up for creative approach. The neighborhood is displayed on a 2D computer screen, but you can use your shoes to control the angle and depth of view and zoom-in and zoom-out, giving a 3D-sense of perspective."In the forthcoming months researchers at Adidas has decided to release three Augmented Reality games which include a stake board game where sneaker is the controller to travel to virtual city alleys, a sneaker-based star wars-like game and a music-based game.

The market price of Adidas's Augmented Reality based shoes is expected to be in the range between $65 and $95. Adidas has exploited Augmented Reality in marketing customized T-shirts too. Users can try virtual T-shirt just by holding their smart phones just in front of camera. Instead of physically going to Adidas showroom and taking the shirt from the rack for trial, AugmentedReality helps in trying thousands of "test shirts" just in a fraction of a second!    

Figure 1 Logical Structure of  AugmentedReality based Adidas shoes (Photo Courtesy: Adidas)

Figure 2 Interactive Augmented Reality footwear by Adidas (Photo Courtesy: Adidas)