Walking on your own can be too slow and tiring sometimes. A robotics company has unveiled their new battery-powered shoes and claims they can boost walking speeds by up to 250 percent.
Pittsburgh-based robotics and engineering startup Shift Robotics has released Moonwalkers, which essentially look like a pair of futuristic rollerskates but they do so much more. They are actually shoes so you’re meant to walk with them as you would with regular shoes or sneakers, while also allowing the motorized wheels to add a spring to each step.
“Moonwalkers are not skates. They’re shoes. The world’s fastest shoes actually,” Xunjie Zang, founder and CEO of Shift Robotics said. “You don’t skate in them. You walk. You don’t have to learn how to use them, the shoes learn from you.”
Shift Robotics, an offshoot of Carnegie Mellon University, powered the footwear using a 300-watt brushless DC motor in each 4.2-pound shoe. These motors then power the eight polyurethane wheels that are meant to significantly increase your walking speed up to a reported seven miles per hour. On average, humans tend to walk at speeds of around two to four miles per hour.
Moonwalkers can even work on uneven terrain. The designers took walking on stairs and other unbalanced areas into consideration. With a simple gesture, the user can lock the wheels so they work just like regular shoes would walking up or down stairs.
Despite being a cool gadget, Moonwalkers definitely aren’t cheap. The first batch of shoes is expected to ship in March 2023 and retail at $1,399 per pair. This may be expensive but can you really put a price on the world’s fastest pair of shoes?
Source: https://shiftrobotics.io/