Best foot forward for bomb disposal technology

A device that was once part of a bomb disposal robot may not be the first thing you would expect to find in a shoe shop, but that is exactly what parents taking children for the annual back-to-school fitting may encounter.

Clarks shoes is installing new devices in its stores which use infra-red light to map the size and shape of a child's foot. The technology, originally used to help bomb disposal robots navigate around obstacles, should make shoe fitting quicker and more accurate, according to the company.

"It might have a history that you wouldn't want to shout about too much - that doesn't bother me," said Bob Hardy, who is foot fitting manager with Clarks. "I'm not too bothered about unexploded bombs in my industry."

The 3D foot gauge was developed by Qinetiq, the privatised defence research agency. It consists of a foot platform surrounded by six black and white cameras, plus a visual display at waist height. Each camera is accompanied by a device that projects an array of nearly 5,000 infrared dots on to the feet of the person standing on the platform.

Each camera then picks out the dots and works out how far away that part of the foot is. The cameras fire in sequence so that dots from one projector are not picked up by a different camera. The whole process takes less than a second and the dots are invisible to the naked eye. Software developed by Qinetiq gathers these coordinates to produce a 3D scan of the feet which is accurate to within a millimetre. The software then suggests the correct shoe size for the customer.

Amanda Turner, director of the 3D camera project at Qinetiq, said the scanner was quicker and more accurate than measuring by hand. The company plans to store information captured by the scanner so that it can organise stores' stocks to take account of regional variations in shoe sizes. Customers will have the option of not having their information stored.

Dr Turner said that Qinetiq was pursuing other applications for the technology, such as body scanning for bespoke tailoring, crime scene scanning for court reconstruction, and facial scanning for proving identity.