Shift Robotics brings strap-on AI shoes that triple your walking speed

What if you could stroll into the office at running speed without breaking a sweat?

That is the premise behind Moonwalkers, a pair of AI-powered strap-on shoes developed by US startup Shift Robotics. The battery-powered rollers strap directly over your everyday sneakers, boosting your walking speed by up to 250% to a top speed of 11 km/h (about 7 mph).

A clip of someone casually walking past pedestrians on the sidewalk blew up on TikTok earlier this year, racking up nearly 25 million views.

Airport moving walkways for your feet

Despite looking like heavy-duty roller skates, Shift Robotics insists these are not for skating.

The shoes have no freewheeling mode, meaning you cannot accidentally roll down a hill or lose your balance. Sensors and machine learning algorithms track your gait, requiring fewer than 10 steps to calibrate to your natural movement.

Founder and CEO Xunjie Zhang compares the feeling to the moving walkways you find in airport terminals. The wheels only spin when your feet push forward: walk faster, and the shoes accelerate; slow down, and they match your pace. They even regulate speed automatically on downhills.

Switching modes requires a couple of physical gestures. To lock the wheels before climbing stairs or boarding a bus, you lift your right heel and drop it back to the ground. To unlock and resume cruising, you lift the right heel again and rotate your ankle clockwise while keeping your toes planted.

Five years of robotics for $1,399

Zhang dreamed up the concept after nearly getting hit by a car while riding an electric scooter to work. He wondered why more commuters did not simply walk, concluding that walking was simply too slow and inefficient.

He teamed up with jet propulsion roboticists from Carnegie Mellon’s Robotics Institute and sneaker designers, spending five years developing the hardware. The project launched on Kickstarter in October 2022, raising nearly $330,000.

Shift Robotics tested the shoes on users aged 15 to over 60, claiming most people became proficient within 10 to 15 minutes without any special skating skills. A magnetic quick-release buckle allows wearers to kick the devices off if anything goes wrong.

Still, skepticism abounds. Moonwalkers are currently sold only in the United States for a hefty $1,399. Commenters on social media were quick to mock the price tag, dubbing them ultra-expensive skates, while others pointed out that cracked, uneven city sidewalks would chew up the tiny wheels in no time.

Why it matters

Micro-mobility has spent a decade obsessing over electric scooters and e-bikes, both of which require dedicated parking, regular maintenance, and road-safety headaches.

Shift Robotics took a clever alternative angle: instead of replacing walking, enhance it. Treating human locomotion like an augmented exoskeleton rather than a separate vehicle solves the last-mile storage problem. For warehouse staff, airport personnel, or commuters navigating sprawling corporate campuses, the productivity gains are real.

However, we think Moonwalkers remain firmly in the novelty category for now. At $1,399, the barrier to entry is simply too steep for regular commuters who already walk. Furthermore, laboratory test videos rarely reflect real-world sidewalks filled with curbs, potholes, and puddles.

The real achievement here is proving that consumer-friendly adaptive gait robotics can actually work without a steep learning curve. If Shift Robotics can bring down production costs and ruggedize the wheels for rougher pavement, wearable walking boosters might eventually graduate from viral curiosity to viable everyday transit.