1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to footwear equipped with rollers in a bottom thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
With the recent increase of leisure activities, roller skating using roller skate shoes such as roller skates, roller blades and inline skates are becoming popular. Generally, such roller skate shoes dedicatedly include a roller assembly at their bottoms. Therefore, in order to enjoy roller skating, a rider has to carry the roller skate shoes to a predetermined place and change his/her walking shoes into the roller skate shoes. After enjoying the roller skating, the rider now has to change back to the walking shoes. These processes are bothersome for the rider.
Nowadays, a variety of shoes equipped with rollers are being introduced to overcome such bother. A conventional roller shoe is disclosed in KR Utility Model No. 20-0378784 registered on May 3, 2005.
The conventional roller shoe is shown in FIG. 1 (corresponding to FIG. 3 in the publication). Since rollers 400 of the conventional roller shoe are rotatable by 360°, the rider can make a turn by 360°. However, in the conventional roller shoe, the rollers 400 cannot automatically return to the initial position after the turning.
Thus, the rollers 400 are often displaced from the initial position. When the rider starts in this state, the rider may even fall down because the rollers 400 would not roll smoothly and promptly due to resistance against the ground surface.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds