Moonwalkers

There’s a fact, discovered by Scientific American and popularized by Steve Jobs, that a human on a bike is the most efficient animal on Earth. Shift Robotics, a startup spun out of Carnegie Mellon, is hoping to disrupt that wisdom with its Moonwalkers, shoes with built-in wheels that speed up human walking. The company rocked up at CES 2024 in Las Vegas with the existing Moonwalkers and its new model, the Moonwalkers X, for us to have a play with.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfsMYjZF7_4Essentially they’re shoes that,…

OpenAI might have skipped this year’s CES, but AI is still everywhere at the show—and, before long, many of the products on display here will be making their way to retail. Some of those products have an obvious real-world value, but others might seem a bit of a stretch. Either way, even if you’ve avoided dabbling in AI so far, it’s only going to get harder and harder to circumvent.Here’s a look at some of the more unusual integrations of the technology on the horizon, some of which make a ton of sense—and some of which…

Shift Robotics aimed to get folks walking faster back in 2022, with a Kickstarter project for strap-on powered wheels called Moonwalkers. Now the Carnegie Mellon spinoff is launching a business-specific variant called the Moonwalkers X.The new version has been designed specifically for indoor commercial use in distribution, logistics and warehouse settings, to benefit workers who might notch up 30,000 steps in a day. In fact, the current model has already been found to allow operatives to get around three times faster…

Tom Hanks is the narrator and co-writer of this colossal and immersive multimedia family entertainment event or next-level school trip, about Nasa’s historic Apollo moon landings and the planned new Artemis missions. It’s taking place at Lightroom, the innovative new digital art performance venue at London’s Kings Cross – recently the site of Bigger And Closer, an immersive show about David Hockney.With the audience gathered in the darkened arena-type area, seated on little upholstered double-stools dotted about, Tom…

Tom Hanks became obsessed with space travel at almost exactly the moment that he became obsessed with film. Listening to him talk, the two events – their ability to manufacture wonder – remain interchangeable in his mind.The first awakening came when he went to watch Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. “I can tell you the day,” he says. “It was a Sunday, it was kind of rainy and it was cold. It was the day the Oakland Raiders beat the Kansas City Chiefs, November of 1968.” He’d have been 12 years old.Kubrick’s…

NASA and Axiom Space Inc. provided a first, limited look at the new spacesuits that will be worn by the next astronauts to land on the Moon.The Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit that will be worn for the Artemis missions was only partially revealed at an event at Johnson Space Center in Houston, in order not to give away any proprietary information about the suit."Since a spacesuit worn on the Moon must be white to reflect heat and protect astronauts from extreme high temperatures," Axiom Space said in…

Moonwalking astronauts will have sleeker, more flexible spacesuits that come in different sizes when they step onto the lunar surface later this decade.Exactly what that looks like remained under wraps. The company designing the next-generation spacesuits, Axiom Space, said Wednesday that it plans to have new versions for training purposes for NASA later this summer. The moonsuits will be white like they were during NASA's Apollo program more than a half-century ago, according to the company. That's so they can reflect…

Unlike cruising down the sidewalk on roller skates that come with a bit of a learning curve, the Moonwalkers are supposedly as easy to use as the moving sidewalks that whisk you down a long airport terminal. You just strap them to your feet and go for a stroll, while enjoying a considerable boost in speed.Developed by a team of robotics engineers who spun off their work at Carnegie Mellon University into a new company called Shift Robotics, the Moonwalkers might look like roller skates, but they add power and intelligence…

Although they may look like just another set of strap-on electric roller skates, the Moonwalkers are actually a bit different. You walk as you're wearing them, with their motorized wheels increasing your walking speed by a claimed 250 percent.Designed by Carnegie Mellon University spinoff company Shift Robotics, the Moonwalkers are currently the subject of a Kickstarter campaign. They can reportedly be attached to a wide variety of shoes, utilizing their adjustable straps and quick-release magnetic buckles.As the wearer…