Am I just cynical or were there some troubling cuts in this video? For example the camera cuts once right before he attempts the stopping distance test, and again right before he goes into a pothole on the street
Yeah it was impressive. The reviewer was comfortable very quickly and was able traverse real city streets without incident. It looks a really clever design.
I was wondering how they could traverse rough terrain like gravel. That video explains how the overlapping wheels makes that possible. Why not go with a "tank tread" type design? Maybe in a future hiking version.
Was surprising to see how quickly the host figured out how to walk in them. I thought there would be a massive learning curve but he seemed like he was able to hit real streets (with potholes/bad paving) pretty quickly and confidently!
They are doing the usual lie of saying 250% increase when they actually meant 70-180% increase. The first Google result for "walking speed"[1] refers to CDC for "2.5 to 4 mph"[2]. The Moonwalkers specs[3] say "Top Speed: 7 mph", which is a 180% increase (2.8x) over 2.5 mph and a 70% increase (1.7x) over 4 mph.
Many of the critical comments here seem to focus only on the high price for these devices, but what about the clunkiness factor?
- These "shoes" weigh in at 4.2 lbs each, which IMO makes it prohibitively tedious to deal with. In comparison, a typical cushioned running shoe weighs in at around 11 ounces.
- The extra height off the ground results in a loss of stability and, consequently, a loss in dexterity.
- It seems to function best when moving in a straight line, but impractical otherwise (like turning a corner).
Perhaps there will be improvements to address these issues in later iterations, but if the novelty isn't that big a deal, you may as well just get a pair of rollerskates.
Another factor to consider is that walking that much faster than average traffic is difficult in dense place. While I don't have a measurement, I typically walk ~twice as fast as the average speed on the street. I once was walking in a very crowded bridge in Hong Kong, and the "friction" I can from the surrounding traffic is tremendous, not to mention you need to be very agile in these situations to not get any trouble.
Also, I wonder if anyone really need this tool to walk 2.5x faster. May be because I have long legs, but I found that open up the legs (the angle of the swinging motion) and increasing frequency can already speed up a lot without being too tiring (bigger angle is easier than higher frequency.)
Another small tip is to consciously use the calf muscles to push off at the end of each step. Perhaps others already do this but for me it's about a 20% speed increase without changing anything else.
This is interesting. They look like roller skates/blades, but if there's really that much tech, they might be easier to use. It's too costly for most, but if they catch on the price could come down.
Bike have advantages, but take up a lot of space at their destination.
Their closest competitor (beyond walking/running) appears to be foldable electric scooters. They take less space than a foldable scooter, but I'm not sure they take up that much less space, and I expect scooters to be able to go further on a charge. It does look like the moonwalkers are much easier to use when switching to/from stairs. Whether or not that matters depends on how often you encounter stairs.
One of the unique beauties of aging is getting to witness the rhyming of history.
~40 years ago it was roller skates
~30 years ago it was roller blades
~20 years ago it was roller shoes
~10 years ago we began to see the wide adoption of battery powered personal transporating devices
sidenote: Anyone else notice the twice mention of Tesla in the promo video?
The mentions of Tesla jumped out at me. It was kind of jarring, since the brand doesn't have the cachet it did only a few months ago. I wonder if they were re-shooting the video today if they'd still mention it.
The mentions to Tesla were off putting to me. It reminded me of when when recruiters try to brag about being founded by ex-Google/Amazon/Microsoft people. If that’s what you choose to sell yourself, imma pass.
What’s stopping this product from having a similar recall to OneWheel? When the battery dies the software isn’t able to acc/decelerate the wheels to counterbalance the user leading causing them to fall and likely injure themselves. However, the Moonwalkers require the user to strap in their feet increasing the chances of injury because they cannot separate themselves from the device.
The only place I can see this having more value than an e-bike or scooter would be in an airport.
Compare this to a simple foldable electric scooter. It allows you get to places much faster, and has similar attributes in terms of things you do outside of commuting, is way cheaper and more reliable.
For the hyper-optimization of walking in crowded places at a slightly elevated pace, you basically have to convince someone that spending x amount of money instead of leaving x minutes earlier is worth it, and that x has to be in the range of play money for an average person, because the latter is free.
In general, if you are pushing a product that isn't relying on lifestyle marketing, or isn't radical new technology, the product needs to be an optimization on something existing, and when considering what it optimizes, you need to look at an entire picture, not just the particular item.
The price will come down via clone products from overseas manufacturers.
Oftentimes recently it's been the reverse; the well funded product is an expensive clone of a readily available but niche thing that can be bought generic.
I just checked. If you look up "motorized shoes -moonwalker" you'll see lots of designs. It looks like a busy but not well funded market
I hate to piss on something someone's obviously worked pretty hard on, but my gut is screaming these are going to be a flop.
Too complex to be durable, too heavy, too unfashionable, too expensive. Having to "switch modes" to deal with stairs. The situations in the rosy advertising are probably not a great place to use them (eg. I can imagine difficulty with the sudden stops / sidesteps / evasions you sometimes need to make in a crowd, especially if you're going faster than the flow. And I don't care how good you think your hardware is, rocks and dirt and the realities of weather destroy my simple shoes over time - good luck with robotic ones).
I just don't see how these offer superiority to passive, well-established alternatives like rollerblading, etc. that aren't difficult to learn.
It's a bit sad saying all this as the tech does seem neat and they look like they could be fun to try.
As a passionate rollerblader who's been practising for over 10 years, I've lost count of the multiple attempts at reinventing shoes with wheels, maybe people should just learn how to skate? :)
The child in me is excited, but the adult in me is skeptical of the stairs mode. Unless there's some very obvious physical signal that the skates are in stairs mode, I can see some people injuring themselves trying to mimic the stairs demo because the skates weren't actually in stairs mode.
I don't know if 5 miles is long enough for the people who actually need it, but if I was a postal worker, these would be pretty sweet. And 1400 USD is cheaper than some car insurance here in Canada for young males.
At least in my neighborhood I think these would be more trouble than they're worth. It's a historic neighborhood so all the houses are built up on berms from when they dug the basements cuz the streets were full of muddy manure, so every walk up to a mailbox has stairs. Unless you're agile enough to go down stairs without doing the lock/unlock dance, these would probably slow you down overall.
It has a 3.0 Ah battery (not Wh, assume one 18650 lipo cell -> 11 Wh), comparable with a smartphone or flashlight. At a full 300W discharge, you're emptying the batteries in just over 2 minutes. You'd better have well-insulated soles before stepping on a pair of 150W space heaters, also, no 18650s are rated for 100C discharge, 20C is a lot and 5C is more common for the high-capacity low-discharge 3.0 Ah cells.
You get 5 mile range by using them like roller skates, using your own legs to power them. The motors are just to aid in walking up stairs and such.
If we're normalising speeding around the city at 2.5x speed, can't we just start walking faster instead? Like, with our legs? It's free and no extra equipment required.
(Yes some people have mobility issues. I don't think they're the primary target market.)
Huh. If they make it down to a few hundred bucks with no history of them exploding/unexpectedly accelerating or stopping/etc then maybe I'll get some for a break from biking everywhere. I dunno how well they'd cope with New Orleans streets and sidewalks, though.
Their video just below the big hero section (see direct link below) mentions it being able to handle "roughest urban terrain, from cracked sidewalks to gravel". I visit New Orleans yearly (friends live there) and walk a lot around mid-city. I feel like they are viable but I'd love to see them in action to know for sure.
[+] [-] ss48|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Rebelgecko|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] odysseus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tootie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bwag|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iLoveOncall|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baby|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] virtualritz|3 years ago|reply
That's a 150% increase, not 250% as the Wired video claims in the 1st 30 secs.
[+] [-] pfych|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] l0b0|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=walking+s...
[2] https://www.nike.com/hr/a/how-long-does-it-take-to-walk-a-mi...
[3] https://shiftrobotics.io/products/moonwalkers
[+] [-] doc_gunthrop|3 years ago|reply
- These "shoes" weigh in at 4.2 lbs each, which IMO makes it prohibitively tedious to deal with. In comparison, a typical cushioned running shoe weighs in at around 11 ounces.
- The extra height off the ground results in a loss of stability and, consequently, a loss in dexterity.
- It seems to function best when moving in a straight line, but impractical otherwise (like turning a corner).
Perhaps there will be improvements to address these issues in later iterations, but if the novelty isn't that big a deal, you may as well just get a pair of rollerskates.
[+] [-] KolenCh|3 years ago|reply
Also, I wonder if anyone really need this tool to walk 2.5x faster. May be because I have long legs, but I found that open up the legs (the angle of the swinging motion) and increasing frequency can already speed up a lot without being too tiring (bigger angle is easier than higher frequency.)
[+] [-] yummypaint|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dwheeler|3 years ago|reply
Bike have advantages, but take up a lot of space at their destination.
Their closest competitor (beyond walking/running) appears to be foldable electric scooters. They take less space than a foldable scooter, but I'm not sure they take up that much less space, and I expect scooters to be able to go further on a charge. It does look like the moonwalkers are much easier to use when switching to/from stairs. Whether or not that matters depends on how often you encounter stairs.
[+] [-] geeky4qwerty|3 years ago|reply
~40 years ago it was roller skates ~30 years ago it was roller blades ~20 years ago it was roller shoes ~10 years ago we began to see the wide adoption of battery powered personal transporating devices
sidenote: Anyone else notice the twice mention of Tesla in the promo video?
[+] [-] pohl|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teg4n_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wyre|3 years ago|reply
The only place I can see this having more value than an e-bike or scooter would be in an airport.
[+] [-] metadat|3 years ago|reply
Day by day, the future of humanity is converging more and more to Wall-E:
https://www.thelist.com/img/gallery/things-only-adults-notic...
[+] [-] SnooSux|3 years ago|reply
Oof
Ideally the product does well and release a more affordable version later.
I don't have a use for it but there's definitely people this could help..
[+] [-] michpoch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beders|3 years ago|reply
Take San Fran: If you'd be on roller skates going down - say - Oak St: you'd have to continuously break.
Surprised Wired hasn't tested something like that.
[+] [-] gghffguhvc|3 years ago|reply
Price will come down.
- I can think of lots of jobs that employers would love their staff to move faster.
- I like how these could make public transport commuting faster between home and transport and transport and destination.
- I like the way they don’t replace the shoe
[+] [-] ActorNightly|3 years ago|reply
Compare this to a simple foldable electric scooter. It allows you get to places much faster, and has similar attributes in terms of things you do outside of commuting, is way cheaper and more reliable.
For the hyper-optimization of walking in crowded places at a slightly elevated pace, you basically have to convince someone that spending x amount of money instead of leaving x minutes earlier is worth it, and that x has to be in the range of play money for an average person, because the latter is free.
In general, if you are pushing a product that isn't relying on lifestyle marketing, or isn't radical new technology, the product needs to be an optimization on something existing, and when considering what it optimizes, you need to look at an entire picture, not just the particular item.
[+] [-] gibolt|3 years ago|reply
Objects like this fill lots of niches, and should be exciting even if you aren't the target demographic.
Clever transmissions like this could work in lots of use cases that weren't previously possible.
[+] [-] wnolens|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristopolous|3 years ago|reply
Oftentimes recently it's been the reverse; the well funded product is an expensive clone of a readily available but niche thing that can be bought generic.
I just checked. If you look up "motorized shoes -moonwalker" you'll see lots of designs. It looks like a busy but not well funded market
[+] [-] kekkidy|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] JustSomeNobody|3 years ago|reply
I hear they're just going to use riding crops instead.
[+] [-] bfeynman|3 years ago|reply
Could not imagine workplace lawsuits that will happen when someone falls and alleges shoe was at fault.
Seems cool, not worth the hassle .
[+] [-] d2049|3 years ago|reply
Same principle here. People don't look cool wearing strange robot sandal shoes.
[+] [-] rkagerer|3 years ago|reply
Too complex to be durable, too heavy, too unfashionable, too expensive. Having to "switch modes" to deal with stairs. The situations in the rosy advertising are probably not a great place to use them (eg. I can imagine difficulty with the sudden stops / sidesteps / evasions you sometimes need to make in a crowd, especially if you're going faster than the flow. And I don't care how good you think your hardware is, rocks and dirt and the realities of weather destroy my simple shoes over time - good luck with robotic ones).
I just don't see how these offer superiority to passive, well-established alternatives like rollerblading, etc. that aren't difficult to learn.
It's a bit sad saying all this as the tech does seem neat and they look like they could be fun to try.
[+] [-] syx|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] silisili|3 years ago|reply
I'm really skeptical these wouldn't just gum up after a few days.
[+] [-] jasonwatkinspdx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeifCarrotson|3 years ago|reply
You get 5 mile range by using them like roller skates, using your own legs to power them. The motors are just to aid in walking up stairs and such.
[+] [-] tastysandwich|3 years ago|reply
If we're normalising speeding around the city at 2.5x speed, can't we just start walking faster instead? Like, with our legs? It's free and no extra equipment required.
(Yes some people have mobility issues. I don't think they're the primary target market.)
Walking is really good for you, too.
[+] [-] satvikpendem|3 years ago|reply
But...that takes extra effort, which these shoes purport to not have. I don't understand your question.
[+] [-] jp57|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] egypturnash|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flanbiscuit|3 years ago|reply
Direct link to where it starts talking about the different terrain it can handle: https://youtu.be/8r0TPD5NUQ0?t=166