Have you ever strolled along a moving walkway and thought to
yourself: "if only I could always walk this fast"? Well Rollkers
has just the thing for you.
At CES in Las
Vegas, the company is showing off what it calls the first
"electronic under shoe", which allows you to walk up to twice as
fast as you can do using the traditional leg-only method. The
somewhat bizzare rollerskate-type shoes is still at concept stage,
but WIRED.co.uk took a look at a prototype to try and work out
whether you'd ever actually want or need such things attached to
your feet.
Rollkers fit to the bottom of your feet and can be adjusted to
fit any size or shape of shoes. Rather than actually rolling on
them, you just walk "normally", but at seven miles per hour. They
are self-balancing, and so apparently require no training to get to
grips with -- although we imagine that the sensation of moving in
them is a little weird at first.
Moving forward is all very well, but how about stopping? Unlike
halting on rollerskates, which involves controlling your speed and
can easily end with a bump if you're not careful, stopping when you
are using Rollkers is apparently as simple and straightforward as
just stopping walking. We'll believe it when we experience it.
Don't
miss
Because of the motion of your legs as you walk, Rollkers are
capable of generating their own energy, meaning there's no need for
a battery. While the prototype we saw was heavy and clunky, the
final product is supposed to be slimmer and lighter, which will
make them highly portable.
We can imagine that these would be really useful to cover
significant distances -- especially across cities -- in record
time. But the thought of even one person, never mind multiple
people, attempting to use them in busy urban areas brings to mind
images of bulls in china shops.
While still at prototype stage now, Rollkers should be fully
functional and available for licensees in late 2015.
Source Article from http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-01/06/rollkers-under-shoes http://cdni.wired.co.uk/620x413/o_r/rollkers.jpg
Rollkers skates designed to help you 'walk twice as fast'
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