WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.720 I'm in Toronto, Canada. 2 00:00:01.730 --> 00:00:04.420 And Toronto is cold for a lot of the year. 3 00:00:04.420 --> 00:00:06.490 Good winter boots are a necessity. 4 00:00:06.490 --> 00:00:08.250 They've got to be warm, they've got to be waterproof, 5 00:00:08.250 --> 00:00:11.393 but also, they've got to stop you going arse over apex 6 00:00:11.393 --> 00:00:13.890 when you suddenly walk on a patch of ice. 7 00:00:13.890 --> 00:00:16.460 This is WinterLab...! 8 00:00:16.460 --> 00:00:19.340 and it's part of the Challenging Environment Assessment Laboratories 9 00:00:19.350 --> 00:00:21.390 at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. 10 00:00:21.390 --> 00:00:24.833 And this is their tilting, frozen floor. 11 00:00:25.690 --> 00:00:29.457 - If you want to find out whether people are at risk, 12 00:00:29.457 --> 00:00:33.110 at risk of falling, at risk of a road accident, 13 00:00:33.110 --> 00:00:36.420 at risk of something, you need to put them in a challenging environment 14 00:00:36.420 --> 00:00:38.620 and see how they respond. 15 00:00:38.620 --> 00:00:42.200 What we have is four modules for different things. 16 00:00:42.200 --> 00:00:46.750 We have the world's most realistic driving simulator now. 17 00:00:46.750 --> 00:00:49.590 When it rains in our simulator, it actually rains. 18 00:00:49.590 --> 00:00:52.660 We also have StairLab, where we have people walk up and down stairs, 19 00:00:52.660 --> 00:00:56.040 and we suddenly and unexpectedly move the room 20 00:00:56.040 --> 00:00:58.500 and they have to grab the handrails 21 00:00:58.500 --> 00:01:02.050 and we can see how effective the handrails are, or the stair design. 22 00:01:02.050 --> 00:01:07.140 21,000 people in Ontario every winter, on average, end up in 23 00:01:07.140 --> 00:01:10.780 our emergency rooms because they fall on the ice and snow. 24 00:01:10.780 --> 00:01:15.040 So the purpose of WinterLab is so that we can do two things. 25 00:01:15.040 --> 00:01:19.980 One is that we can test the boots, and inform consumers what they should buy 26 00:01:19.980 --> 00:01:24.173 and the other is we can help companies and ourselves develop better boots. 27 00:01:24.173 --> 00:01:27.388 - I know I'm harnessed in, but that is terrifying! 28 00:01:27.388 --> 00:01:30.145 - It's an icebox really, it's insulated. 29 00:01:30.145 --> 00:01:33.900 We can generate winds, we can actually make nice, white, fluffy snow, 30 00:01:33.900 --> 00:01:38.280 we can control the air temperature very precisely 31 00:01:38.280 --> 00:01:40.850 and we can control the temperature of the ice very precisely. 32 00:01:40.850 --> 00:01:45.011 We actually have a group of... graduate students(!) 33 00:01:45.011 --> 00:01:48.073 like every other university lab you've ever been to, 34 00:01:48.073 --> 00:01:50.910 because they're not very expensive and they're sort of disposable(!) 35 00:01:50.910 --> 00:01:55.870 who do this testing and because we want some uniformity. 36 00:01:55.870 --> 00:01:58.250 - It's a good harness, very good harness. 37 00:01:58.250 --> 00:02:00.887 - Now, in order to test the performance of shoes, 38 00:02:00.887 --> 00:02:07.083 we choose to put WinterLab on top of a platform that we can gradually tip. 39 00:02:07.083 --> 00:02:09.600 - It does feel ever so slightly like gravity is shifting. 40 00:02:09.600 --> 00:02:13.835 - We tip it as you walk up and down until the moment that you slip. 41 00:02:13.840 --> 00:02:19.200 We have an angle which we think is just acceptable. 42 00:02:19.200 --> 00:02:21.680 It's seven degrees. 43 00:02:21.680 --> 00:02:26.300 We actually take the minimum value of several people 44 00:02:26.300 --> 00:02:29.140 if you can make seven degrees up and down comfortably, 45 00:02:29.140 --> 00:02:30.810 we give you one snowflake. 46 00:02:30.810 --> 00:02:34.367 - This is the good shoes, I can just, oh, okay, yeah. 47 00:02:34.367 --> 00:02:35.970 No, I can literally just walk normally. 48 00:02:35.970 --> 00:02:40.400 - At the moment, we've got a scale of three snowflakes 49 00:02:40.400 --> 00:02:43.330 and that was because the first time we ever did this, 50 00:02:43.330 --> 00:02:47.030 90 out of 100 boots failed to get one snowflake 51 00:02:47.030 --> 00:02:48.790 and nothing got better than one snowflake 52 00:02:48.790 --> 00:02:53.750 so to publish it as a five-snowflake scale looked a bit depressing. 53 00:02:53.750 --> 00:02:56.835 We've already tested some prototypes for next year 54 00:02:56.835 --> 00:03:00.204 and they're getting two and three snowflakes. 55 00:03:00.204 --> 00:03:03.190 - That's fine, I put my foot down and it just stays where it is. 56 00:03:03.190 --> 00:03:06.750 - We are really quite confident that eventually 57 00:03:06.750 --> 00:03:11.270 we're going to be able to add some more snowflakes at the four and five level. 58 00:03:11.270 --> 00:03:14.260 It raises another interesting point, and that is: 59 00:03:14.260 --> 00:03:16.080 can you have too much friction? 60 00:03:16.080 --> 00:03:20.176 We're a long way off that yet, but of course, more than half 61 00:03:20.176 --> 00:03:23.410 the falls that you experience are people tripping up. 62 00:03:23.410 --> 00:03:29.550 We will eventually decide whether a five-snowflake shoe is a good idea or not. 63 00:03:29.550 --> 00:03:33.410 I'm really happy, in two years we've done two things. 64 00:03:33.410 --> 00:03:36.430 One is that we've changed the buying habits of people 65 00:03:36.430 --> 00:03:39.980 and the other is now the industry is improving the quality of boots 66 00:03:39.980 --> 00:03:41.760 and we're helping them do that. 67 00:03:41.771 --> 00:03:43.990 - Thank you very much to all the team at WinterLab 68 00:03:43.990 --> 00:03:47.047 here at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. 69 00:03:47.047 --> 00:03:48.750 Pull down the links in the description 70 00:03:48.750 --> 00:03:50.753 for more about them and their research. 71 00:03:52.410 --> 00:03:54.232 I swear I'm not deliberately trying to do that. 72 00:03:58.390 --> 00:03:59.223 Yep!