Wired on 3D printing, robotic kicker and more as adidas perfects the laceless soccer boot of the future in its Lab
“To this end, the Future Lab developed a material it calls Primeknit - a yarn that's digitally printed in a single unit. Traditionally, boots are made from pieces of leather that are stitched together; the new technique means that a boot fits an individual's foot while remaining rigid at specific points - like a hardened piece of leather - by means of fusing the yarn. "Boots used to consist of a base material over which further layers were packed; now we are working with only a single layer," Müller says.”
“Next to the climate chamber is a 22-metre-long stretch of artificial turf. At one end is what adidas describes as the best football player at the facility: a flywheel with an artificial foot at the end, known as Roboleg. Its shots travel at 160kph - 40kph more than the average speed of travel of a ball from a professional player. Not only is Roboleg more powerful than a human, it can reproduce each of its shots exactly. Sixteen cameras in the ceiling of the lab record the trajectory of every ball, taking 3,000 pictures per second, analysing its flight using Hawk-Eye - the tracking technology used at Wimbledon for line calls and in the Premier League for goal-line decisions - which offers real-time data.”
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