Just in time for the Olympics. Engineer and designer Luc Fusaro from the Royal College of Art in London just created what is being called the ‘world’s fastest shoe’ that can be sculpted to any athlete’s foot. But the big story is how Luc actually created the shoe.
Luc set out to create a new type of shoe and didn’t start stitching or sewing together leather or really anything. Instead, he turned to the hot new way to create products: 3D printing. If you haven’t heard of 3D printing, it’s basically a way to print out 3D prototypes of any product you can imagine. So now let me throw some science at you courtesy of geek.com:
[The shoe] is created using selective laser sintering (SLS), which fuses powdered materials with a CO2 laser to create an object. This process means 3D scans can be taken of the runner’s foot so as to ensure the show matches the shape perfectly. Fusaro can also change the stiffness of the soles according to the athlete’s physical abilities.
The shoe is dubbed ‘Designed To Win’ and it looks like it could live up to its name. According to reports, the shoe can improve performance by 3.%, meaning a 100-meter sprinter could drop his or her time by about 0.35 seconds. That’s a crazy amount of time to drop just by switching shoes.
The future is here. And it’s all thanks to innovative students. Viva la education!
