We just put up a preprint detailing the design of this new hardware, take a look for more details: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The main benefit of these is that we can study ground stiffness perturbations on a fully instrumented treadmill, as well as conduct experiments overground. I'm hoping to share results from a study investigating adaptation to a stiffness perturbation applied by these shoes very soon!

At maximum stiffness, they behave like tall platforms. At minimum stiffness, they are very squishy and dissipative as air flows in and out of the exhaust valve. We detect the sole deflection with embedded Hall effect sensors.

These are a set of tall soft outsoles that strap to the bottom of a normal pair of shoes, with a soft 3D-printed air pocket beneath the forefoot and hindfoot that we pressurize from a wearable air tank. The air pressure level beneath each foot is controlled remotely with an RF keyfob.

To create an overground counterpart to the AdjuSST, I've been working on making adjustable compliance footwear. Introducing Adjustable Compliance Footwear Technology (AcFT):

Last year I announced a preprint for a new adjustable surface stiffness treadmill, the AdjuSST - that paper is live on IEEE Xplore: ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/108...

We've been getting some interesting findings from experiments we've been doing on this treadmill, so look out for those soon!