ROBOTICS STARTUP UNVEILS THE WORLD'S FASTEST WALKING SHOES
A Pittsburgh-based robotics and engineering startup recently unveiled Moonwalkers, a pair of battery-powered shoe attachments that, it claims, can boost walking speeds by up to 250%.
At first glance, Moonwalkers look like a pair of futuristic roller skates, but there is actually a lot more to them than that. You are actually meant to walk in them the way you would with regular shoes or sneakers, letting the motorized wheels put extra power into your steps. Powered by a state-of-the-art motor, this ingenious contraption is actually an attachment that can be added to a wide variety of footwear to significantly increase your walking speed, up to 7 mph/11 kph.
For comparison, a human’s average walking speed ranges from 2.5 mph/4 kph to 4 mph/6.4 kph. The sensation of walking with the world’s fastest shoes has been compared to that of walking on a “moving walkway” in an airport.
Designed by Shift Robotics, in association with Carnegie Mellon University, Moonwalkers consist of a 300W brushless motor in each 4.2 pound (1.9 kg) shoe that powers eight plastic wheels. There is also an AI-powered gearbox that increases or decreases speed according to data collected from a series of sensors that monitor the speed of the wearer’s walk. The Moonwalkers are also able to detect downhill movement and brake to prevent accidents.
“Moonwalkers are not skates. They are shoes. The world’s fastest shoes, actually,” Xun-jie Zang, founder and CEO of Shift Robotics said. “You don’t skate in them. You just walk naturally. You don’t have to learn how to use them; the shoes learn from you.”
But, do the world’s fastest shoes work on uneven ground or on stairs? We all know how tricky those are to navigate in roller skates. Well, the designers have taken that into consideration and programmed a simple movement that allows wearers to lock the wheels so that they can walk up or down stairs as they would in regular footwear.
Moonwalkers were recently introduced, and the first batch is expected to ship in March of 2023, at a retail price of USD$1,399. That is not cheap, but then again, these are not your average shoe attachments. With them, you will have the world’s fastest pair of shoes!
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