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Just Slightly Insane
"The concept is the same as springs,but instead of actual springs, Nike Shox uses high density polyurethane foam columns,which provide the same basic effect as springs.They absorb the energy of impact and return it to the wearer on the transition from heel-stroke to toe-off."
Oh my God. That sounds nice, but think - the time constant of the return . . . it is not 'adaptive' in nature. It doesn't know what you're going to want to do. It can just as well zig when you want to zag. Nothing as simple as this can work well under the range of conditions basketball implies. My guess is it doesn't do much. If it did, it would cause train wrecks.
Speech recognition wasn't, and isn't, easy, either. Sure, you can do it under controlled conditions, with a limited vocabulary domain. But we'll all have to put up with the Baby Bell's maniacal devotion to collecting voice samples, when pressing '1' is a LOT easier. Not all engineering makes sense.
Try the new BMW 5 series, however. The steering wheel has a nice adaptation - it 'scales' (lock to lock) to the speed you're going. Thus it takes roughly 10 turns at 70 to do as much as one turn will do at 10mph. My younger boy wanted to know, could they take it one step further and recognize roll-over just before it happens - and refuse to let the wheel move that last unsafe millimeter?
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