These sneakers are woven by robots and have 3D-printed soles

[pesco]

Originally published at: These sneakers are woven by robots and have 3D-printed soles | Boing Boing

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[Papasan]

I like my athletic shoes made by human slaves, those machine slaves don’t know a damn thing about feet/running. /s

[abutilon]

Don’t look very washable.

[FGD135]

I’m getting a “Designed by computers. Built by Robots. Silenced by Lasers…” vibe.

[fiatrn]

but are they small batch artisinal?

[RickMycroft]

Just you wait!

[prooftheory]

Adidas is claiming that they don’t use human slaves. About their place on the ASPI list:

… adidas is treating the allegations detailed in the ASPI report very seriously…

Based on our investigations… we can confirm that we hold no direct contractual relationship with any of the named businesses. In spring 2019, we explicitly required our materials suppliers not to buy yarn from the Xinjiang region. That included a prohibition on sourcing yarn from Huafu Top Dyed Melange Yarn Co. Ltd…

Haoyuanpeng Clothing Manufacturing Co. Ltd is neither an active nor authorized entity in our supply chain. We have engaged directly with the factory’s management team and they have issued adidas with an apology, for having falsely displayed adidas logos on their website and building. These have now been removed.

We do not produce goods in Qingdao Jifa Huajin Garment Co. Ltd. It is not an approved or authorized supplier for adidas. We have reached out to the parent company, Jifa, to understand more.

The above actions form part of our ongoing efforts to ensure that there are no supply chain linkages to XUAR, or to the export of labor from this region. Those efforts include close engagement with the Fair Labor Association… and our collaboration with industry associations in North America, who have recently issued a Statement…

https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/adidas-response-4/

My impression is that runners didn’t care much for the 4d sole. It’s heavy and doesn’t actually do anything cushion-wise other than look aesthetically pleasing. It would be neat if they could create the uppers to the exact dimensions of your feet for a racing shoe.

[bobtato]

The shoes look interesting at a cursory glance. Sneakers are one of the few areas where digital manufacturing is likely to fully live up to the hype in the near future.

I have a sneaking suspicion, though, that Adidas is hoping, here, to smother that innovation in its crib. Making impressive but unrealistic shoes with a $10 million robot is a good way to head off all the small outfits who are about to start making just slightly less impressive shoes with $10,000 robots.

Once that takes off, big shoe brands will become the cheesy boy bands in a world that suddenly has a teeming indie scene – they’ll still have a big market, but they’ll never be the tastemakers again. So when Adidas or Nike seem to embrace this new technology, it makes me think of 90s Microsoft “embrace – extend – extinguish”.