- You're at the airport
and you get the sudden urge
to punch someone in the back of the head.
Why? Because you're on that awesome people mover
conveyor belt thing that lets you walk
like fricking The Flash.
But someone on there, standing still, not walking.
(whistling)
Don't you understand this is your chance
to have superpowers?
Well now, you don't need to go to the airport
or be around other people for that.
You can wear these, the Shift Moonwalkers.
Basically shoes that let you walk really fast.
Sounds stupid or amazing.
I'm guessing it's gonna be a bit of both.
First of all, these are heavy,
they're over four pounds each.
They basically just look like, if Linus was a transformer,
(laughs) like this is his final form.
And we got a bunch of wheels here, in weird shapes.
And I'm supposed to be able to put these on
and just walk like normal and they'll speed me up,
up to 7 MPH, which is about 11.265 KPH.
So if you want to go slower, you walk more slowly.
If you wanna go faster, you walk more fastly.
It's just as easy as that.
Apparently, you can even go up and down stairs
if you do a little trick with the adjuster control.
So we're gonna try it out and hopefully I don't die.
Okay, first things first.
Open 'em up. Oh my God.
Is that just glue?
These are very engineering sample-y.
You can see there's a lot of wear marks on them already.
I just want to get it on.
I'm gonna assess the quality of the Velcro.
That's Velcro and there's a lot of it.
It actually spans the whole thing.
So that's pretty good.
It really looks like this'll fit,
I wanna say up to like very large sizes
but maybe not too small.
(grunts) I'm like a 10.
That's pretty much the exact envelope of my foot.
Oh my gosh.
These are chonky!
Okay, I feel pretty secure in that.
And now that my foot's on the ground,
I actually can't roll it back and forth.
It doesn't want...
Are you down there? - [Andrew] Yes!
- Yeah, it doesn't really want to...
I'm like forcing the servos if I do that,
because they're turned off, I actually need to turn them on.
On the back, you can see there's a power button
and behind this weatherproof little door,
a USB-C charging port.
And you've got this on the back of both shoes.
Shoes? What are they?
I'm wearing shoes.
I'm definitely not wearing two pairs of shoes.
Oh, you can see that it articulates here.
So that's gonna help you walk normally.
Oh, check that out.
So you don't actually have to adjust the Velcro every time.
There's also this quick release
thing kinda like when you're wearing skis.
There's also a magnet involved in here,
kind of confusing.
So you can just pull that, like that, can you?
Oh, and it's supposed to just click right back in.
That is pretty smart.
I feel like this is a bad way to put these on
'cause my foot has probably shifted in a weird way here.
The first thing I'm noticing, which I love,
is that these have made me at least an inch taller.
Now I don't know if I was supposed to turn them on
before or now, but it's kind of awkward.
Oh hold on. Look at that.
I can lift this heel.
So it's actually not that awkward to kind of take a knee.
Click.
Okay. There's actually haptic feedback happening right now.
It's pulsing for some reason.
I'm just gonna walk,
towards these stairs.
I don't think these are functioning right now.
(Andrew chuckles)
Yeah, they're not rolling.
No, it still appears to be locked.
So what's that? That other gesture or something like that?
Oh, now it's green.
Oh, they're going.
Okay.
Oh this is so awkward.
It's on. It's kind of on and off.
Getting' the hang of this now.
Do I look as stupid as they feel?
- [Andrew] They look pretty, (laughs)
It looks pretty, pretty silly.
- But you can't keep up.
I'm flying.
Oh yeah, I feel like they're actually going now.
The sensation of speed isn't there
which is a shame 'cause I like the sensation of speed
I get on one of those people movers.
Oh they're screaming.
They are screaming now.
Whoa, these things are straight up moving me.
There's definitely a lag effect.
Like this is all me.
And then they ramp up.
You're pretty mobile still.
What if I actually jog?
I don't think that they're meant for this.
This is pretty hard.
(groans) You gotta go slow to go fast.
Get tired of walking, sit in a chair.
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Alright, so I'm gonna lift my heel
to put these into Lock Wheel Stair Mode and
try not to die.
So did I do it?
I sure hope so.
Oh yeah.
You are not very agile with these on and they're loud.
- [Jake] What the hell is wrong with you?
- What's up losers?
- [Plouffe] Oh the skate shoes!
(laughter)
Do you walk faster?
- Oh you fly
(laughs)
They take a bit to get going.
(laughter)
I don't think I can even really get going
in this office setting.
It's too small.
You need like a real runway.
- [Plouffe] They're so loud!
- Dude, this is the quietest they get.
Let these babies fly.
(shows clanking on the floor)
Oh my God.
(laughter)
They stop in 3 1/2 ft.
Apparently (chuckles).
On a dry surface.
Let's see.
- [Office Member] Not that convincing is it?
- My toe is under the counter right now.
This is my demise right here. This is how it ends.
(shoes clanking on steps)
Oh God. They're not even on stair mode.
- (indistinct), a personal mix that prioritizes
(indistinct speaker)
- Wow.
- [Riley] Wow that guy is cool.
(office members clap)
Yeah! (clapping continues)
- [Jacob] Coolest guy in middle school right now.
- [Riley] Ladies and gentlemen -
- [Andrew] Who's had sex before?
(whistle)
- [Riley] The coolest guy in tech.
- When they kick into their highest gear,
they're fully carrying you
and you can actually start walking more lackadaisically,
while just ripping.
You work at a mall, (chuckles)
or you're at CES,
a giant trade show where you're just gonna have to be
running back and forth all day
and you're gonna get 20,000 steps in.
These would've been great actually.
Now watch this downhill.
They support up to 10 degrees of slope.
Which doesn't sound like very much.
But I felt really supported 'cause
it's like a regenerative braking on an electric car.
Here comes a slope.
No problem, very smooth.
Yeah, I got a quick turn here.
Just zip over this way.
It's weird. They're like between shoes and roller blades.
I'm gonna jump off this.
Woo.
(chuckles)
They did not like that. The light's still green
but they're not rolling.
Something is wrong.
Oh, they're blinking red.
Oh.
- [Speaker] Well they're not green.
- Are they dying?
These are quite fast.
I have so many thoughts.
Number one,
will you wear these to do like a half-hour,
hour walk to work?
How much do you value your time?
Instead of walking your dog for an hour,
you walk your dog for 45 minutes,
dog goes farther.
Here's what you're not gonna do though.
You're not gonna walk to the office
and continue wearing them in the office,
at all.
Like they're too clunky and heavy aside from looking stupid.
You'll look stupid.
You want your colleagues to respect you.
And they're also just very loud on the floor.
They're louder than the most obnoxious,
high-heel of shoes, for example.
You would probably annoy other people
up in the subway, in the tube on the stairs.
You're just like too slow.
Not as annoying as someone carrying a bicycle,
but actually probably even more annoying
'cause you just look like an ass hat.
But I will say that you can get around.
I'm sweating, my feet are sweating.
They're very heavy to pick up.
Your gate...I feel like
your feet would get stronger just to pick these things up,
every step.
And I think that's part
of the reason I ended up being
almost like a roller skate.
'Cause they start to carry you.
You get momentum and they're actually driving you forward.
Gave me a tendency as someone who used to roller blade
as a kid, I ski now I've played hockey,
a lot of skate and skate like activities.
My tendency was to start skating.
I don't know if other people who can't skate
or don't skate, would have that tendency.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing but it's just weird
because your gate changes over the course of the usage.
As you speed up, you are no longer walking
naturally, you're starting to skate a bit.
You feel that the most when you're doing turns.
'Cause you do get a thing where
you can't just stop at a dime and just go, "What?"
And turn around right away,
like you can if you're walking,
'cause you are moving so much faster
and when you're turning like that,
you tend to turn like you're on skates.
They're pretty loud.
They're definitely too loud to use indoors or in an office.
They have this loud whistling noise.
This is a product that I wish came with
an instruction manual.
Because I don't know what the different lights mean.
You know what, some audio feedback would be nice.
When I'm turning the on stuff
I can't necessarily see the lights.
It'd be nice if it just said, "Powered on."
Or when I switch modes, if it said,
"Stair mode," or something. That would be helpful.
The range is seven miles or
again like 11K.
That doesn't seem like that much range, honestly.
I would probably only get these
if my walk to work is
5k
or more.
I don't know. I feel like I want a little more range.
But then again that means bigger batteries
and that means heavier.
So there's definitely some kind of Calculous they
have to do there to find the like sweet spot.
Do I want these to be a thing?
In a perfect world, maybe not.
But in the world we live in,
I think I prefer a city dominated by these people,
than maybe,
electric unicycles.
They're way more low profile than that and they fit
into existing infrastructure a little bit better than that.
Although, if I was on a sidewalk with these,
I don't think I would be comfortable.
They do ramp down in speed quickly enough that
when you inevitably walk up to somebody who's going slowly,
I don't think you're in risk of running them over.
But you would be annoying everybody
and scaring people, when they hear you coming.
That would push me into like the bike lane
or the curb where I'm way too slow
for everything that's in that lane.
So there's probably an ideal commute for these,
that isn't most people's commute.
And another thing that's cool about them is that you can,
in theory, switch modes, in terms of
walking to escalator, to subway,
to walking again, to getting into an Uber, honestly.
Yeah, they're $1,400. That is crazy.
Really crazy.
I could see for the experiment that these things are,
maybe you like risk it for $200, $300, but $1,400
is like, you're really betting the farm on these things.
I don't know, they accept up to 65 watts
of power by a USB type C
and they are meant to last an hour and a half.
So, I think there's a perfect customer for these.
I think it's very few people in the world.
But if these get better,
I mean I could see them getting normalized
for certain occupations.
Like if you're gonna make more money 'cause you have these,
then get 'em.
Maybe if I'm an airline, I'm an airport,
I want my employees at the airport to
work more efficiently
and instead of just lollygagging down the tarmac,
I give 'em these. 'Cause not everyone gets to ride in those
cute little trucks.
Maybe I'd do that.
And maybe they proliferate in industry first
and then to consumers later. I don't know.
They're very cool and I respect the company for going
for it and trying to bestow upon the world this innovation.
I think the social factor is the biggest impedance to them.
They're just, they're kind of weird.
They're very eyebrow raising.
But who knows what happens in 10 years?
In 10 years, lion's kids could be hosting this show.
Who knows?
So subscribe for that and thanks for watching Short Circuit.
If you like this video, maybe watch our coverage of
some e-bikes
or other things that
are more normal.