Shoes that will show the way

"Wizard of Oz" heroine Dorothy only had to click her ruby red slippers together and they would spirit her home to Kansas.
Now, an Indian high-tech start-up is promising to do the same in real life with a new, GPS-enabled smart sports shoe that vibrates to give the wearer directions.
The fiery red sneakers, which will also count the number of steps taken, distance travelled and calo ries burned, will go on sale in September under the name LeChal, which means "take me along" in Hindi.
The shoes come with a detachable Bluetooth transceiver that links to a smartphone app to direct the wearer using Google maps, sending a vibrating signal to indicate a left or right turn.
They are the brainchild of 30-year-old Krispian Lawrence and Anirudh Sharma, 28, two engineering graduates who founded their tech start-up Ducere in a small apartment in 2011 with backing from angel investors and now employ 50 people.
Smart shoes aimed at specific demographic markets -- such as dementia sufferers and children whose parents want to keep track of their movements -- are already commercially available.
But Lawrence and Sharma believe theirs will be the first to target mass-market consumers, and have focused on creating stylish rather than purely functional footwear.
As well as the red sneaker, they are marketing an insole to allow users to slip the technology into their own shoes.
"Earlier, wearable technology was always seen as machine-like, nerdy glasses or watches, but now that is changing," said Lawrence.
They say they have 25,000 advance orders for the shoes, which will retail at between $100 and $150.
Demand has so far mostly been through word of mouth and through the lechal.com website. But the company is in talks with retailers to stock the shoes ahead of the holiday season in India and the United States.
It forecasts it will sell more than 100,000 pairs of the shoes, which are manufactured in China, by next April.
Wearable technology is a growing global sector. Market tracker IDC forecast in April that sales would triple this year to 19 million units worldwide, growing to 111.9 million by 2018.