The Goal: Increase Performance & Decrease Injuries

At the heart of it, we care deeply about increasing performance and mobility while decreasing injuries. This is probably the holy grail of the footwear world, and thus we take this goal on with humility. Up till now, no footwear has been able to decrease shocks to the heel, ankle, knee and hip, while at the same time keeping control.

This has been the crux: if you add any type of padding and cushioning, there is a loss of sense and feel with the ground, which takes away control. If you want greater power, one must remove padding from under the foot. Case in point – track shoes. For them, optimum control is required which means almost no padding exists under the foot.

We ask why one has to choose. Why can’t an athlete have both optimal cushioning for comfort while simultaneously having advanced performance?

With this in mind we have developed the pTiga platform, designed for all types of footwear.

An Industry’s Need to Innovate

Although some may disagree, the footwear industry has not innovated much in the last 20 years. On the technology front, there really have only been advancements in cosmetics – colours of uppers, materials, plastics, small modifications to cushioning, etc.  There has not been a change in the foundational platform, both in architecture and followed closely by production.

The footwear industry spends more on marketing its products, than in does on innovating them. We see this gap between what is available and what is needed as an opportunity.

New...Footwear Should Be Dedicated To The Individual

Simply put, the footwear of the future has to address an individual’s needs with unparallel directness. Instead of a shoe aimed at a variety of sports and uses, there needs to be footwear developed for customer specific uses – in design, function and fit.

There will, of course, always be the broad-use footwear. However, a golfer will want a customized shoe to fit their specific needs, and not just golf needs but their personal biomechanical and physiological needs. Obviously, each person is different when compared to another - their bones within their feet never the same. Future footwear has to adapt and account for such differences.

For example, a runner will want footwear that fits personally, is designed with end-user function set to the type of running they do (trail, track or road), and designed for that environment.

Although this insight is not totally new, it has failed to take root mostly due to technological failings.

This process of giving the customer a superior product that is suited to them will need to be efficient, and easy to implement. pTiga™ footwear is such a platform, one that has re-imagined what footwear is, and what it can do.



Plantiga's Core Innovation: pTiga™ Footwear

Plantiga's key innovation is in it's footwear. Footwear build and manufacture has changed little in recent centuries. Sports and medical designs look to add slight modifications to the core design for specific purposes but, a shoe is still a shoe - a sole, an upper and an insole.

Plantiga's cradle and articulated perimeter stability enhances every element of footwear design, use and capability. The foot now sits within the shoe while the sole enforces the correct physiological motion of a foot with the stability of a mountain goat (on which it was designed, in part!).

Because of it's design, the pTiga™ footwear platform takes a different approach in manufacture, drastically decreasing the environmental impact of footwear production.

pTiga™, once instrumented, becomes an information tool. Instrumented pTiga™ is the basis for Plantiga's 1Grid™ and Holis™ solutions.

Fixed vs. Mobile

The problem with most biometric systems is the fact they are fixed in nature, and are limited to wherever the physical device is located for scanning. They are typically used at specific points of verification, such as access-controlled doorways, and so on, where an individual either swipes an index finger or looks into an iris scanner.

By only having scanners at junctures, the system has no way of knowing who people are once they are inside an area, or outside of it. This becomes problematic in places where the controlling authority needs to know who everybody is, at all times.

This is where Plantiga comes in. The essence of what we are doing is mobility. We have developed wearable intelligent shoes, which by their very nature create a mobile biometric system. The 1Grid system is decentralized in that the scanner is on everybody. 1Grid creates new levels of identity management, accounting, tracking and auditing. This difference excites, and motivates everybody on the Plantiga team.