Virtual reality as support tool in shoe life cycle

The life cycle of an industrial product goes through several stages, from the initial idea to the finished product, and on to the purchase and recycling. Virtual reality environments (VRE) allow the user to interact with a digital representation of a product, and so can be used to perform aesthetical, ergonomic, functional tests as well to support customer decisions in the selling process; mainly for customized products. In this contribution, ITIA-CNR presents two important applications in the shoes context: VRShoe and MagicMirror. VRShoe is a VRE for designing shoe aesthetics. MagicMirror, currently under development, is an augmented reality (AR) system for supporting the decision-making processes of customer customized shoes.