The Moonwalkers by Shift Robotics is a $2,000 pair of shoes designed specifically to “revolutionise walking.” That is, these aesthetically-challenged bad boys promise to boost your walking pace by 250%, theoretically allowing you to walk at the speed of a run as if you’ve just dropped a magic mushroom in Mario Kart.
If it all sounds very high-tech and ugly, that’s because it is. The wearable Moonwalkers – which you strap on over your actual shoes – are about as attractive as a pair of crocs, with an AI drivetrain that uses an algorithm to adjust to your natural gait, fed by an ergonomic hinge system with no less than eight polyurethane wheels on the sole backed by high-performance DC motors.
Think of them as the wearable tech evolution of Heelys if you want to make some sort of grotesque comparison. But instead of skating on the heels of the kicks, you’re constantly being propelled forward based on your normal walking pace.
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The Pittsburgh engineering team behind it, spearheaded by Xunjie Zhang, has posted these forward-thinking shoes on Kickstarter with a projected fulfilment scheduled for April 2023. That means we won’t be seeing the Moonwalkers hit retail for quite some time, but there’s little doubt what’s being touted as “the world’s fastest shoes” should spike attention from more than a few backers.
Zhang is nothing if not persuasive, after all.
“Our basic form of movement hasn’t changed in six million years, we still walk the same way our great great great grandparents walked: slowly,” the founder and CEO of Shift Robotics said in a promotional video.
“The way we walk is stuck in the past. It’s time to bring it up to speed.”
The Moonwalkers have been designed with a universal strap so you can wear them with any footwear options as some kind of sub-shoe. Your feet don’t actually touch the base of the Moonwalkers – you strap them to your normal shoes, which means you can just slip them off when you inevitably feel the itch of a thousand judgmental stares.
Zhang has designed the Moonwalkers with a USB-C port on the base, rating the battery with around 9.6 km of range in just 1.5 hours. The claim is that walkers can reach speeds of up to 12 km/h, which when based on nothing but your natural walking speed sounds fairly impressive. That’s just short of the speed of a run and just under half the speed of an average sprint.
Shift Robotics claims that the Moonwalkers should be adaptable to several kinds of terrain since the hinge allows the feet to bend naturally while the wheels can lock for safety. The promotional video shows a wearer walking up some stairs with the Moonwalkers strapped to their sneakers.
