“There’s no place like home,” or at least that’s what Dorothy believed when she clicked her red heels together while being transported back to Kansas in the Wizard of Oz. Well it looks like fiction has been made a reality, thanks to a wearable created by iStrategyLabs which will fit into a shoe and can be activated simply by clicking our heels together.
Dubbed the rather aptly named Dorothy, it will see wearers install an Arduino Bluetooth device called “Ruby” to your shoe, and in order to activate it, well you’ll just have to click your heels three times. So what is the purpose of the Ruby? Well one of the ideas right now is to use it to get yourself out of awkward situations inconspicuously.
For example if you’re out on a date and it isn’t going well, all you’d have to do is tap your heels together and you could receive a fake call on your phone which you can pretend that an emergency has popped up and you need to go. Its designers are also looking at using the Ruby to hail an Uber taxi in a pinch.
As it stands, the Ruby is currently a prototype and is a bit too large to fit comfortably into shoes, but the folks at iStrategyLabs are currently looking into making an even smaller version, one that could possibly be integrated into an insole as well. In any case if you’re curious as to what the Dorothy project is about, you can check out the video above for more info.
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