Determination of the critical variables that define comfort in footwear

Abstract

The objective of the project is to objectively characterize the comfort in footwear of the manufacturer CAMPER by analyzing the motion of 54 volunteers (27 male and 27 female) wearing 6 different models of the shoemaker. In a first step, kinematic and dynamic measurements of shod and barefoot gait will be done in the Biomechanics Lab, in order to assess the interaction between user and footwear. Specifically, the measurements will be:

• Lower limb motion (joint angles) by means of optical motion capture system;
• Ground reaction forces by means of force plates;
• In-shoe plantar pressure by means of instrumented insoles;
• Muscle activity of tibialis anterior, soleus and gastrocnemius by means of a surface EMG system.

Then, in a second step, volunteers will reply a survey regarding their subjective perception of comfort in the different shoe models. Finally, statistics of all results will be done to extract correlations between the objective (measured) variables and the subjective comfort feeling.