Salted Venture, a member company of the Born2Global Center, announced Wednesday its independently developed smart golf shoes, Iofit, will be receiving the Innovation Award at CES 2017, the world’s largest electronics expo, to be held in the United States in January 2017.
The CES Innovation Award is granted by the Consumer Technology Association to the highest-quality products in 28 categories (e.g. home appliances). Iofit will receive the award in the wearable technology category, which has seen increasingly intense competition in recent years.
Iofit is a golf shoe brand that helps the wearer achieve the most effective impact position by measuring the degree to which the wearer’s center of gravity shifts using a sensor attached to the sole. Through a self-developed mobile application, the device can process 30 to 120 data frames per second.
Iofit provides not only real-time data on changes in the wearer’s center of gravity, but also balance data for each swing position (e.g. address, backswing top, and impact point). The wearer can compare this data with that produced by professional golfers and then use it to adjust his or her posture or discuss technique with a coach.
The key focus of the company was to enhance the sensor’s sensitivity and make it more durable and water resistant. Salted Venture CEO Cho Hyung-jin said, “This device is highly accessible, as it is more compact in size and much more affordably priced (200,000 won, or $171) than other similar devices. In the future, we will apply this technology to other types of sports footwear, such as baseball, tennis and weightlifting shoes.”
(
jshwang@heraldcorp.com)
