- Hello fellow pedestrians.
You know that feeling when you're at the airport
and you step onto a moving sidewalk, you're still walking
but suddenly the world is floating by so much faster
and you have all this extra effortless speed.
Well, that's the idea behind these.
They're called Moonwalkers, and they basically
put an electric moving sidewalk under each of your shoes.
They promise to increase your walking speed
by 250% with no additional effort.
So questions, are they real?
Apparently.
Are they ridiculous?
Possibly.
Are they safe?
Are they tough enough?
Do they work?
Are they actually good?
[funky music]
So we reached out to Shift Robotics here in Winter
in Pittsburgh, and we're gonna check out their R&D lab.
[shoes clunking]
All right, I'm all ready to go to work as a moonshiner?
Anyway, let's see how this goes.
First things first, I need to know how these things work.
So I'm gonna get a crash course
from the very guy who dreamed them up.
- Okay, so I'll help you to activate them.
- Uh-huh.
What we should do is lift up our heel.
- Yeah.
- Right heel, and turn inside.
Yeah. - And then put it down?
- And put that down.
- So see the green LED here?
- Yeah.
- They turned green.
That means now you are in shift mode.
- Okay. - Yeah.
- It's like a, it's like a Dorothy Wizard of Osmo.
- Yeah.
To go back to the lock mode.
- Yeah. - Right.
All you need to do is lift the same heel that you just used
for shifting, - Uh-huh.
for moving into the shift mode by doing this.
- Okay.
- And put them down.
- Oh, yeah. - That's it.
You're on lock mode again.
- Back to the white light.
- Mm-hmm, let's get started.
- All right.
Whoa, oh my god.
[techno music]
Oh, whoa.
All right.
[shoes clomping]
- That's right, that's right.
- This is such a strange feeling.
I mean, it really feels like I've got a moving sidewalk
- Uh-huh.
- under my feet that's sort of adjusting to the way I go.
All right.
Now that I've got the basics down
it's time to put these babies through some trials.
First up, the brake test. [screams]
Walking fast is obviously great
but if you can't stop real quickly
then that could be a disaster.
So we've got a tape measure on the ground.
We're gonna see if I can go full speed
and get down to a stop within like five feet.
Let's see how this goes.
[shoes clomping]
Oh my god, this feels dangerous.
[shoes whirring] Oh, okay.
That was all right.
I think I actually get closer than five feet.
Let me try that again.
Four feet? - Four feet.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
All right.
Full speed and - [shoes whirring]
I'll take that any day.
See teeth un-chipped.
Okay, these things are pretty fun
but they're not just heelies for grownups.
They're powered by brushless motors
and some onboard machine learning.
I'd love to get into the nitty gritty
of how these things actually work.
So one of the things that you talk about
is an AI drive train, right.
- Right, right.
- That sort of learns from you as you go.
Can you explain a little bit about how that works?
- There's IMU sensor inside, which basically detect how
your feet move with each other.
When they are in operation, actually two Moonwalkers
communicate with each other.
- Okay.
- Real fast, with Bluetooth at hundreds times a second.
- Okay.
- They kind of figure out where shoes are
in relative in space.
- Relative to each other?
- To each other, yeah. - Ah.
- In spatial relationship.
But we are also looking at the power
looking at the force coming from the motor as well.
So we know exactly how much force you're pushing
off the ground at the same time.
- So if I have like a very specific kind
of like strut, it would learn my strut.
- Right, right, right, right, right.
- Okay.
- Obviously within a margin, but yes,
it will be able to learn most of people's stride.
- Okay, cool.
- Yeah.
- My strut is patent pending, just so you know, so.
[Xunje laughs]
- Okay. So these things are supposed to work
in pretty much everyday conditions, so we're gonna try 'em
in a couple different types of terrain
and see how they navigate a few different obstacles as well.
Oh, I really feel like I'm just gonna catch an edge
and go flying straight into the heart of the gnarly stuff.
Pitted Pittsburgh streets.
Ah.
Oh wow.
Oh my god. [laughs]
So I have to say, I'm shocked that these little tiny wheels
are navigating these huge cracks.
I mean, you see they almost half disappear into them
and you yet it rolls right over him with a lot of ease.
I mean, I guess that's redundancy, right?
You got 10 wheels that's super aggressive.
That's ridiculous.
What's the idea?
Why so many wheels compared to like a four wheel
roller skate or roller blade or something?
Right, right, right, right.
So to be able to go over bumps or cracks
we need to make the wheel large enough kind
of patented idea is that we try to stack the wheel together
so that even though they are small, but simulate much
much larger radiance of rails.
- Alright, let's go for a few more tests.
So we wanna try to get some slightly more
concrete measureables.
So I'm gonna be racing myself now this time
with my heart rate monitor watch on.
I'm gonna go as fast as I can
to the end of the block and back in these Moonwalkers.
And then I'm gonna try to run at the exact same speed
and see if my heart rate is a lot higher.
My resting heart rate is currently at 95
because I'm trying to not die of hypothermia.
So go.
[peppy music]
[breathing hard] So I ran at almost the same speed.
My heart rate is 147.
You can see that 147.
So, more or less the same speed.
Definitely a lot more exertion. [breathes out]
This is actually the ninth iteration of the Moonwalkers.
- So we've been going
through at least nine generational major iteration
and countless of minor iterations
to arrive where we are today.
- Which was the first one?
- So this one - - Oh.
- was de facto really the first one. [laughs]
- This is before like AI was integrated.
- Absolutely.
- This is before any AI change.
- So before if you hit the button, your feet could actually
just shoot out from you. - Absolutely, yeah.
If you don't release that, you can actually fly.
- I'm just curious, where did this idea come from?
Like why?
- Yeah, if we can really enhance and augment
the way people walk especially in places like San Francisco,
L.A, New York, where most of the people commute
around on foot or mass transit.
- Right.
- If we can help them to cut commuting time by half
- Right.
- That's a huge saver for their life.
- Pedal assist electric bikes are kind of like
help you go faster in the bike lane -
- Right. - with less effort.
This idea is sort of like a walking assist electric -
- Absolutely. - electric shoe,
to help you go faster just on the sidewalks.
Alright, time for one final test.
How do these babies hold up
to a real professional speed walker?
Dean is a two times collegiate national champion
speed walker, recently turned pro.
Dean, how fast do you typically speed walk a mile?
- Around six flat.
- These can go seven miles an hour.
My math is not strong right now
but I'm pretty sure that means you're gonna win.
[Dean laughs]
But let's find out. - Yep.
Oh my god, he's so fast.
He's so fast.
I want him steroid tested.
All right, so Dean demolished me that time,
but you know these things take a little while
to get up to speed so we're gonna give me little bit
of a handicap to to get going.
All right, ready?
Here I go.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
All right, I'm pretty much up to speed.
Can feel Dean already breathing down my neck.
Oh, walking as fast as I can.
Oh no, he's so fast.
Oh.
♪ Add it up ♪
Let's hit the highs and lows.
High?
These things actually worked a lot better
than I expected them to
and they handled some really rough, rutted out terrain.
I was shocked at how well they did.
Felt like I had superpowers a little bit.
It almost felt like I was ice skating over land.
These actually felt a lot safer
than I expected them to as well.
They're really pretty portable.
Even if they ran outta batteries
you could just toss 'em in a backpack
and I like that they're universally chargeable
with a USB-C, you just charge 'em under your desk
and you're ready to go home.
They had pretty good stopping power
and I didn't feel like they were just gonna shoot out
from under me unexpectedly.
They felt very intuitive.
They felt like they were gonna do what I wanted them to do
not what they wanted to do.
Hopefully nobody hacks them
and turns them into rocket shoes.
Low?
There's still a few comfort things
that need to be worked out.
These straps really do dig in a little bit
especially if you're wearing lighter weight shoes
and I feel like they need to work
on spreading out the pressure on your feet.
Weighing in at 4.2 pounds each, you really do feel it
with every step.
Not so much when you're walking and gliding
but when it's powered off in lock mode going up stairs,
that's a real significant weight that you've got
under your feet.
They're also certainly on the pricey side
[cash register dinging]
which makes them a bit of a luxury item
and that's gonna eliminate them for a lot of people.
But if you're commuting in them daily
I could see it actually being worth it.
Overall, I have to say I really like these things
a lot more than I expected to.
They were just super fun and yeah, if I had a pair
I would definitely rock them around town,
at least some of the time.
With all that being said, I got a little moonwalking to do.
[techno music]
Sha, mow.
[techno music]
♪ Add it up ♪