Volumental and RealSense Are Redefining Fit for Footwear
The challenge
Finding the perfect pair of shoes and boots has always been a guessing game.
The solution
Volumental is transforming the footwear retail experience with technology that ensures every shopper walks away with their best fit.
Powered by its proprietary FitTech® platform, Volumental combines 3D scanning, AI, and RealSense™ depth-sensing technology to capture the precise dimensions of every foot and match customers with shoes that fit them perfectly.
The results
The result? A personalized, data-driven shopping experience that eliminates size uncertainty and reduces returns, benefiting consumers and retailers.
With RealSense’s advanced depth perception at the core, Volumental’s vision of “a world free from sizing” has become reality. Today, the company’s solution is used in over 3,000 stores across 60+ countries, having scanned over 66 million feet and counting.
The Sizing Problem: Retail’s Last Friction Point
The global footwear industry faces a persistent challenge: approximately 60-80% of people wear incorrectly sized shoes. This widespread problem leads to customer dissatisfaction, increased return rates, and lost sales for retailers. Footwear sizing differs significantly across manufacturers and countries. Sizing standards vary widely between manufacturers and regions, while traditional methods — like Brannock devices or subjective sales-floor assessments — deliver inconsistent results.
For online retailers, the challenge is even greater. Without the ability to try on shoes, return rates can exceed 30%, generating significant costs for retailers and frustration for shoppers.
The industry needed a solution that could provide accurate, consistent measurements and personalized recommendations across every channel.
Volumental’s FitTech solution, powered by RealSense depth cameras, delivers just that — removing uncertainty and providing confidence at every step of the buying process.
The RealSense D415: Precision Depth Sensing for Foot Scanning
At the heart of Volumental’s system is the RealSense Depth Camera D415, purpose-built for precision measurement and 3D modeling.
The D415 uses RealSense stereo vision technology with rolling shutter sensors and an integrated RGB camera, capturing fine detail and color for lifelike 3D models, essential for accurate foot scanning. Its compact, cost-efficient design enables deployment at scale across thousands of retail locations worldwide.
Key specifications that make the D415 ideal for footwear applications include:
- Highly focused, standard field of view: Delivers higher-quality depth per degree for precise foot measurements
- Stereo depth sensing: Provides accurate dimensional data for reliable sizing recommendations
- Integrated RGB camera: Captures color data for comprehensive 3D modeling
- Compact form factor: Fits seamlessly into sleek, retail-ready scanner designs
Engineering the Future of AI-Powered Fit
How It Works
Volumental’s foot scanning system is remarkably simple from a customer perspective.
The Scanning Process
When a customer steps onto a Volumental scanner, the system begins a five-second sequence. During that time, RealSense D415 cameras capture high-resolution depth and color data from multiple angles to create a detailed 3D model of each foot. Within 10 seconds, the shopper’s 3D model and personalized recommendations are ready, fast enough to maintain engagement and accurate enough to inspire confidence.
Rigid-Shell Precision: Ski & Skate Applications
For ski boots and hockey skates, the challenge is less about length and more about three-dimensional fit. During the same 5-second scan, RealSense™ D415 captures the depth cues needed to model instep volume, heel retention, and forefoot shape. FitEngine then compares that profile to known lasts by brand and model, returning a short list of shells and liners most likely to fit—and, where appropriate, recommending heat mold, punch, or footbed adjustments. The result is a decisive, comfort-forward fitting that preserves performance and reduces return/refit cycles in both retail and rental workflows.
The AI-Powered FitEngine
Once the scan is complete, Volumental’s FitEngine takes over. Powered by AI with over 30 million foot scans, FitEngine has the largest database of 3D foot scans in the world.
Here’s how it works:
- The FitEngine analyzes the shopper’s unique foot shape.
- It compares the scan to millions of others in its database.
- It identifies customers with similar feet and tracks which shoes they bought — and didn’t return.
From there, the system curates a personalized list of recommended styles, predicting not just size, but comfort and satisfaction. This data-driven approach replaces subjective fitting with proven, crowd-informed precision by leveraging the collective experience of millions of previous shoppers with similar feet.
The logic is simple: shoes that fit people with similar feet are likely to fit you, too.
“Finding the perfect fit isn’t about size; it’s about the feeling you have when you find it.”
— Alper Aydemir,
Volumental’s cofounder and CEO