Swiss brand On has unveiled the Cloudboom Strike LS trainer, which is topped with a lightweight, low-carbon upper created by spraying filament using a robotic arm and will debut at the Olympics.
The Cloudboom Strike LS is On's first shoe that incorporates an upper made using its sprayable technology, which the company has named LightSpray.
The trainers can be produced in three minutes with the upper sprayed onto a foam-rubber and carbon fibre sole.
The Cloudboom Strike LS trainer's upper is sprayed on
"LightSpray is our new high-performance technology and the special thing is that it's basically making an upper in only one production step using our own engineered and developed technology, fully automated, within three minutes," said On director of innovation, technology and research Nils Altrogge. "The upper is not knitted, weaved or other typical technologies that are used in the textile industry, it is sprayed," he told Dezeen.
"So the resulting textile is something completely new, there's not even a word for that."
The trainers weigh 170 grams.
The lightweight upper weighs around 30 grams, with the whole trainer ? which is On's lightest ? weighing 170 grams.
It will be worn at the Olympics by athletes including Kenyan marathon runner Hellen Obiri, who told the New York Times that she said "I can't run with these" when she first saw them, due to the unusual look.
However, she went on to win the Boston Marathon earlier this year in a...