Footwear fit is one of the most important consumer considerations in purchasing shoes. In order to improve footwear fit the foot shape and footwear fitting have been evaluated. First an error metric was developed using dimensional difference between two curves. Using this error metric and data from 50 participants, it was found that foot outline can be generated accurately using 12 selected landmarks. Furthermore, using the error metric, a quality of fit metric was developed to quantify the fitting between footwear and foot in 2D. Twenty participants (8 males and 12 females) were used in the study and the results show that the dimensional difference is not uniform along the circumference of the foot and thus this information can be used to design shoes with the right pressure at the rig...[ Read more ]

Footwear fit is one of the most important consumer considerations in purchasing shoes. In order to improve footwear fit the foot shape and footwear fitting have been evaluated. First an error metric was developed using dimensional difference between two curves. Using this error metric and data from 50 participants, it was found that foot outline can be generated accurately using 12 selected landmarks. Furthermore, using the error metric, a quality of fit metric was developed to quantify the fitting between footwear and foot in 2D. Twenty participants (8 males and 12 females) were used in the study and the results show that the dimensional difference is not uniform along the circumference of the foot and thus this information can be used to design shoes with the right pressure at the right location. Furthermore, it was found that the perception of fit is influenced by the curvature of the shoes. Therefore shoes need to be design to have the right curvature in order to have a direct mapping from foot to the shoe. Since current method used for quantification of flare does not have direct mapping from shoe to foot, a new method is proposed for the calculation of foot curvature using principle component method, so that there is a one-to-one mapping from shoe to foot. Using data from 50 participants, results show that the foot is 3.2 degrees curved toward medial side. Then, using 25 anthropometric measures (including curvature measures), four factors (length, width, height, and curvature) were obtained explaining 77% of the foot variation. Finally using data from 81 participants (41 males and 40 females), the 3D foot shape was modeled using 4 parameters, to an average absolute error of 3.56 mm. The thesis provides a basic method for foot shape evaluation to improve footwear fitting. The method can be further improved and also used for other body part shape evaluation.