Apple patent involves a sensor to tell you when your shoe is wearing out

Apple has been granted a patent (number 20170164684) that would tell you, among other things, when your shoes are starting to wear out. If the patent ever comes to fruition, I would image it would involve the company’s ongoing partnership with Nike since I doubt we’re going to be seeing a line of Apple Shoes.

In the patent summary, Apple notes that, as a shoe wears, physical support provided by the shoe decreases, thereby reducing associated protection from injury.  Good shoes are necessary to provide support during intense physical activity, such as running, soccer and football. When a critical wear level is reached, even if the shoe looks like it’s not particularly worn, the shoe may not provide adequate support and may, in fact, cause damage to feet. Apple wants to change this.

Here’s the summary of the patent: “A system assesses activity and displays a unitless activity value. A detector senses activity of a user. A processor reads sensed activity data from the detector. A display displays the unitless activity value. An enclosure houses the detector and the processor. 

“The processor periodically reads the sensed activity data from the detector and processes the data to generate an activity number, the number being used to generate the unitless activity value based upon a maximum number and a display range.”

Of course, Apple files for — and is granted — lots of patents by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Many are for inventions that never see the light of day. However, you never can tell which ones will materialize in a real product.