Move over the magicians who trick you to see how they can tie their shoelaces with their hands up in the air. Now, you too can do the act. Not with magic of course but with technology.
Thanks to Nike, you are possibly a few months away from grabbing your new pair of shoes that would be able to tie its laces without any help from you or anyone else. Yes, you are poised to witness the world’s first self-tying shoelaces or the first powered laces that don’t require additional installations.
If you are wondering what or how these self tying shoelaces and sneakers are going to look, then you can get some inspiration from the Nike Air Mag shoes that Marty McFly was wearing in Back to the Future. Do you remember those shoes that could perfectly fit onto his feet and the laces would tie themselves up? You are about to witness something very similar, or at least the idea of it. For now, no one knows exactly how Nike powered laces or how the shoes would look like but one can always speculate.
Nike had released the Air Mag series and it has been doing fairly well. It is not clear if the same series will get the powered laces hereon or there would be a new range of shoes that would have the self-tying laces. But what one cannot avoid imagining is that it is the year when Nike would roll out this state of the art footwear, 2015: a year when the shoes were shown to be a reality in the Back to the Future films.
Nike had applied for the patent, for what was called automatically lacing trainers, way back in 2010. Ever since, people have expected self tying laces from Nike and they have had to wait for almost half a decade. That wait may be over soon.
If Nike designer Tinker Hatfield is to be believed then the footwear of the future is just a few months away. But if you don’t wish to wait any longer then you always have the Arduino controller and sensor that can be used on a Nike High Top to tie your shoelaces without using a hand. The prototype developed by Blake Bevin is selling right now and it works with several brands and makes of shoes.
