Moonwalker Shoes Promise To Increase Your Walking Speed
nlike cruising down the sidewalk on roller skates that come with a bit of a learning curve, a shoe called Moonwalkers will zip you around more quickly than walking while being no more complicated than a moving sidewalk at an airport. Developed by a team of robotics engineers who spun off their work at Carnegie Mellon University, Moonwalkers might look like roller skates, but they add power and intelligence to the experience so you never feel like you have a rocket on your back.
… A strap-on design allows the Moonwalkers to be used with almost any pair of shoes, and each unit features a 300-watt electric motor that powers a set of eight polyurethane wheels similar to what you’d find on a pair of inline skates, but much smaller, and not all in a single line, so there’s no balancing required. Sensors monitor the user’s walking gait while algorithms automatically adjust the power of the motors to match, synchronized between each foot, so the added speed increases and decreases as the user walks faster or slower. A hinged toe section flexes the same way a shoe does, so the Moonwalkers feel more comfortable and natural to walk in.
… The inventors claim that Moonwalkers can increase someone’s walking speed by up to 250 percent.
