The world's fastest shoes: Moonwalkers - electric-powered roller skates that increase walking speed by 250% - are available on Kickstarter
A team of robotics engineers who moved from Carnegie Mellon University to a new company known as Shift Robotics has introduced Moonwalkers shoes on Kickstarter. These are not ordinary shoes, but some kind of roller skates that increase walking speed by 250%.
Here's How They Work
Moonwalkers are as simple and straightforward as possible: you simply strap a sole with a pair of rows of wheels to your feet and keep walking, but much faster. These rollers can be used with any footwear, a pair of wheels eliminates the need for balancing, and the flexible sole makes wearing more comfortable.
Each unit has a 300-watt electric motor that drives a set of eight polyurethane wheels. Sensors track the user's gait, while algorithms automatically adjust the motors' power according to the synchronization between each foot, so the added speed increases and decreases as the wearer walks-faster or slower.
Most people walk at 4 to 6 km/h, but "moonwalkers" increase this to 11 km/h. Distance to a full stop is less than 1 m. There is a Lock mode for stairs, which locks all the wheels.
Inside, there are also batteries, one charge of which is enough for about 10 km.
The cost is Moonwalkers is $1000, but it will increase to $1400 in the future. The developers had planned to raise $90,000 through Kickstarter, but have already exceeded that amount: at the time of writing the news more than $104,000 has been raised for the Moonwalkers. There are 27 days until the end of the collection.
Source: Kickstarter
