Washington: A US robotic engineering company has invented shoes that it claims can increase the wearer’s walking speed by up to 250 per cent. Moonwalkers The battery-powered shoes, called (Moonwalkers Shoes), look like skates, but are powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and algorithms. The company says that wearing this shoe can be walked normally and does not require hand control. The company named Shift Robotics has invented this shoe, which is a spin-off (subsidiary company of the university) of Carnegie Mellon University of the United States. They have a strap-on design that allows these Moonwalkers to be used with any pair of shoes.
Shift Robotics founder and CEO Xunjie Zhang said in a release published on the company’s official website last week, “Moonwalker is not a skate but a shoe. In fact, it is the world’s fastest shoe. You don’t skate with Moonwalk on, you walk. You don’t have to learn to use it, the shoe learns from you.” According to Gizmodo, Moonwalkers have 8 polyurethane wheels just like skates. However, these wheels are much smaller and are not in single line. The shoe is powered by a 300-watt electric motor. As the user walks fast or slow, artificial intelligence monitors the way the wearer walks using sensors and the algorithm automatically matches the motor power, synchronizes the speed, increases and decreases it.
Shift Robotics claims that its Moonwalker shoes increase the walking speed of the wearer by 250 percent, Gizmodo reported. This is based on the analysis that the average walking speed of people is 2.5-4 miles per hour (4-6.4 km per hour). Moonwalkers also have a special provision for use on stairs, which locks the wheels in the shoes and prevents them from rolling freely. The company says that the braking distance of these shoes on a dry road is about 2 feet. According to the New York Post, Moonwalkers are available in the market for sale under the Kickstarter campaign. They have been priced at $ 1,399 (Rs 1,15,332) and deliveries are expected to start from March 2023.
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FIRST PUBLISHED : October 29, 2022, 10:14 IST