Well that's the idea behind these, they're called moonwalkers and they basically put an electric move, moving sidewalk under each of your shoes.

They promised 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?

So you start to shift robotics here in winter in Pittsburgh and we're gonna check out their R and D.

Lab.

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 going to get a crash course from the very guy who dreamed them up.

Okay, so I'll help you to activate them.

What we should do is lift up our hell yeah, right here and turn inside and then put it down and put that down.

So see the reality here.

Yeah, they turn green.

That means now you're in shift mode.

Okay, It's like a it's like a Dorothy was Yeah, to go back to the lock mode, all you need to do is lift the same heel that you just use for shifting for moving into the shift mode by doing this.

Okay and put them down.

That's your lock mode again.

Back to the white light, Let's get started.

Alright.

Whoa!

Oh my God.

Oh whoa alright, that's right, that's right.

This is such a strange feeling.

I mean it really feels like I've got a moving sidewalk 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, 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 ft.

Let's see how this goes.

Oh my God, this feels dangerous.

Oh okay, that's all right.

I think I actually get closer than five ft.

We try that again.

four ft.

4 ft.

Yeah.

Alright.

Full speed and I'll take that any day.

See teeth in chipped.

Okay, these things are pretty fun but they're not just Heelys for grownups.

They're powered by brush less motors and some on board 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, learns from you as you go.

Can you explain a little bit about how that works.

This emu sensor inside which basically detect how your feet move with each other when they are in operation actually to moonwalkers communicate with each other real fast by Bluetooth, hundreds times a second, they kind of figure out where shoes in relatively in space to each other to each other in spatial relationship.

We're 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.

Obviously within a margin, but yes, it will be able to learn most people's stride.

Okay, cool.

Yeah, my strut is patent pending.

Okay, so these things are supposed to work in pretty much every day conditions, so we're gonna try them in a couple of different types of terrain and see how they navigate a few different obstacles as well.

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.

Oh wow, Oh my God, 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 get it rolls right over them with a lot of these, I mean, I guess that's redundancy, right, you got 10 wheels, that's super impressive, that's that's ridiculous.

What's the idea why so many wheels compared to like a four wheel roller skate or roller blades?

Right, right, right, right.

So to be able to go over bumps and cracks and we need to make the wheel large enough kind of pattern.

That 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 want to try to get some Slightly more concrete measurables.

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 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.

So I rented 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.

This is actually the ninth iteration of the moon walkers.

So we've been going through at least nine generation of major iteration and countless of minor alterations to arrive where we are today, which was the first one.

So this one was de facto really the first one.

This is before, like aI was integrated.

Absolutely hit the button, Your feet could actually just shoot out?

Absolutely yeah, if you don't release that, you can actually fly.

I'm just curious where did this idea come from?

Like, like what if we can really enhance an argument the way people walk actually in places like san Francisco, L.

A.

New york, but most of people commute around on foot or mass transit, if we can help them to commuting time by half, that's a huge saver for the pedal assist.

Electric bikes are kind of like help you go faster in the bike lane 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.

All right, time for one final test.

How do these babies hold up to a real professional speed walker?

Dean is a two times collegiate national chain champion speed walker recently turned pro Dean, How fast do you typically speed?

Walk a mile?

Around six flat seven miles an hour.

My math is not strong right now, but I'm pretty sure that means you're gonna win.

But let's find out, oh my God, he's so fast, he's so fast, I want him steroid tested.

Alright, 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 a little bit of a handicapped to get going?

Alright ready.

Here I go.

Five 4321.

Alright, I'm pretty much up to speed, can feel dean already breathing down my neck walking as fast as I can.

Oh no, he's so fast.

Oh, 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 out of battery, you could just toss them in a backpack and I like that they're universally chargeable with a USB C just charge them 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 going to 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 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 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 upstairs, that's a real significant weight that you've got under your feet.

They're also certainly on the pricey side, which makes them a bit of a luxury item and that's going to 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 shamo, go, go, go, go.