The purpose of this paper is a social one, to present various experimental thermal analyses of sports footwear to identify the areas that ensure the best foot ventilation for comfort in movement. The mechanical properties of the analyzed footwear were determined on the Nano Indenter Agilent G200, with the help of which Young’s modulus was determined according to ISO 14577. Thermography measurements were performed at the Oradea University Sports Club. The FLIR SC 640 thermal imaging camera was used, which is a portable thermographic scanning equipment. The measurements were performed on eight athletes (subjects) in a volleyball training session, wearing sports footwear (Asics and Mizuno). Thermographic recordings were made during training at five different times: moment zero (before the start of training), moment one (2 min of training), moment two (5 min of training), moment three (15 min of training), and moment four (at the end of the volleyball training session). For the other three subjects, although having different models of the same sports footwear, the analysis of the thermal distribution values shows they are within the minimum and maximum limits of the five subjects analyzed in the paper. Based on the thermographic recording values obtained, a mathematical model was determined using polynomial regression to predict temperature values outside the range of the experimental data. In the present paper, research was carried out in order to identify the thermal variations of indoor sports shoes used in volleyball training so as to detect the heat exchange between the foot and the outdoor environment. Whether we are talking about winter sports or sports that take place in other atmospheric conditions, the comfort given by the optimal temperature at the level of each body segment is certainly reflected in the level of performance achieved.

The purpose of this paper is to present a procedure for automating the scanning process based on a mathematical model for a handheld 3D scanner for shoes used in some indoor sports. The study aims to use inverse kinematics to automate 3d footwear scanning used for indoor sport (handball) using a robotic arm with three joints. A modeling of the robotic arm and final effector was performed, to simulate the minimum and maximum trajectory of the robot arm according to the angles shown based on the mathematical model and inverse kinematics. With an easy-to-use interface and ergonomic design, this 3D scanning solution offers the versatility to scan various objects (such as scanning two shoe models used in indoor sports) and complex surface types. This scanning manner represents the state of the art of 3D scanning solutions as well as a benchmark in the 3D measurement equipment industry. The data obtained as a result of this research provide new directions and solutions for sports shoe scanning for indoor sports based on scanning trajectories preset by inverse kinematics in order to automate the scanning process using a handheld 3D scanner. Based on the mathematical model presented in the paper, automation of the scanning process can be achieved by maintaining the proposed trajectory using an automated arm operating through a control program that can be run on a simple controller.