SBIR Phase II: Footwear Fitting System for Online Retailers

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The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is in online retail industry for garments, orthoses and prostheses. Each human body is unique, and the fitting approach is often reduced to trying on products in-store or in-clinic. While this approach works to some level, increasingly more purchases are made online, and a similar trial and error method leads to a high return rate for retailers and a significant time burden for customers. The fitting system Eclo is developing will dramatically reduce the shipping costs for online retailers and increase the convenience for online shoppers. Additionally, the virtual fitting technology will help remove the dependency of companies on brick-and-mortar stores and to reduce the cost of goods by half in some cases. Furthermore, the technology proposed is the key for mass manufacturing of custom garment since all geometric properties of the body will be readily using smartphones. The databases of body scans could also be used for designing better products. Lastly, the shoe scanner in this project requires a small scanner head design for internal volumes; this technology can be tailored to making endoscopes for medical or rescue applications. This project will prepare a virtual fitting system for commercial use in online shoe retail and address a 25% return rate. The virtual fitting system will give online shoppers a size recommendation based on scans of their feet. A foot scanner allows users to obtain a 3D model of their feet by taking a video with a smartphone. This process will be made simple, robust, and user-friendly with the aid of augmented reality. Using smartphone sensors and strategically selecting images from videos will make this process fast and accurate. A shoe scanner scans the inside of shoes and will be upgraded to also scan the outside of shoes. A fitting algorithm will be developed to detect important features on feet and shoes to make size recommendations. A custom device will be made to measure the material properties of shoes to give online shoppers a description of comfort and support levels of shoes. Online shoppers will be given a size recommendation and an in-depth fit description with visual graphics.