Tech makes these trainers change colour

Projection mapped sneakers, AR interior design and dancing robots at London Future15

Duncan Bell
By
published
in News

A highlight of Future15 at London's Flux Innovation Lounge, a showcase of leading edge ways to flog you new stuff, was Projection Artworks' Display Mapping, which allows easy viewing of Nike's innumerable trainer colour schemes.

Projection Artworks' tech, also seen on an in-store-style display here - again, those visuals on the shelf are animated projections, not embedded screens - gives a relatively affordable, remotely-controllable (you can reset it via SMS!) approach to "mapped" projection, which follows the contours of any object, from well wicked sneaks to the front of a building to, well, a shelf.

Also highly impressing us as we stumbled round clutching a glass of slightly rough Sauvignon Blanc were DigitalBridge and Cimagine. These are pretty much rival AR products - DigitalBridge lets you place furniture into rooms "live", then walk around and view them it from any angle; Cimagine places virtual wall and floor coverings, plus furniture to an extent, into photos of your rooms. You can then share the results with social followers, spouses, designers, Wallpaper magazine, etc.

Unlike previous apps along these lines, neither require a "marker" in order to work out scale, and more importantly, they both seem to actually work in a non-glitchy and useful way.DigitalBridge lets you move around your room viewing new chairs from any distance or angle as if they're actually there – more or less, at 10x better quality than the competition. Cimagine flows new, virtual wall coverings into your room's photo, keeping light sources and flowing it behind radiators, furniture and so forth.

Both are in talks with everyone from John Lewis to, er, Littlewoods so expect avoiding life-changingly bad furniture and paint/wallpaper decisions to get that much easier in 2015.

Then there was this robot that mimics your movements - even challenging passers-by to dance-offs.

Finally there was an Oculus Rift game ("pull" your way through multiple universes in Collider) and an absolutely massive touchscreen (from LG in this case), because there always is at things like this. A cracking event, in short, to which you can't come, because it's invite only.

Duncan Bell
Duncan Bell

Duncan is the former lifestyle editor of T3 and has been writing about tech for almost 15 years. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. His current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years. 

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."

Latest