The media is full of stories about child obesity and how modern children do too little physical activity, but it seems that may be about to change thanks to a new insole. A final year design student from Brunel University, in London, Gillian Swan, has designed an insole for children’s shoes that records the amount of exercise a child does during a day and converts it to television watching time.

The project, ‘Square-eyes,’ means the more exercise a child does – the more television viewing time they earn. The insole contains two buttons. The first records the number of steps taken by the child in a day. The second is used to trigger transmission of the total number of steps taken to the base station using a radio signal.

The base station, which is connected to the television, then calculates the TV time the child has earned and displays it on the station’s LCD screen. Once their earned television time runs out, the TV automatically switches itself off and is disabled until more exercise credit is earned.

“Today’s children are exposed to a raft of television programmes and children’s channels,” says Gillian Swan. “Ten years ago, children were entertained by playing games with their friends, now they are cooped up in their bedrooms watching hours of television programmes. Square-eyes will help children to include exercise in their daily routines from an early age.”

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