Robotic engineers have unveiled what they claim are the world's fastest shoes - footwear designed with eight wheels that increase walking speeds by 250 percent. Called Moonwalkers, they strap around your shoes and propel you forward using tiny electric motors that power weight wheels, mimicking that of roller skates. The shoes are the brainchild of a team of robotics engineers at Shift Robotics, which thought of the idea when the founder started walking to work and realized powered shoes would dramatically cut his commute by more than half. This is because it increases walking speeds from the average 3mph up to 7mph. The team markets the tech, which retails for $1,399, for those'who have the need for speed' and see's Moonwalkers as the future of walking.

Robotic engineers have unveiled what they claim are the world's fastest shoes - footwear designed with eight wheels that increase walking speeds by 250 percent. Called Moonwalkers, they strap around your shoes and propel you forward using tiny electric motors that power weight wheels, mimicking that of roller skates. The shoes are the brainchild of a team of robotics engineers at Shift Robotics, which thought of the idea when the founder started walking to work and realized powered shoes would dramatically cut his commute by more than half. This is because it increases walking speeds from the average three miles per hour up to seven miles per hour. The team markets the tech, which retails for $1,399, as for those'who have the need for speed' and see's Moonwalkers as the future of walking.

An exoskeleton "boot" that allows people to walk 9% faster with 17% less effort has been developed by scientists. This robotic footwear comes with a motor that works with calf muscles to give the wearer an extra push with every step, researchers from Stanford University in the US said. The team said its work, which is published in the journal Nature, could help people with mobility impairments "move throughout the world as they like". Patrick Slade, who worked on the exoskeleton as a PhD student at the Stanford Biomechatronics Laboratory and is the first author on the study, told the PA news agency: "There are a number of clinical populations we hope to help including older adults, people with muscle weakness from a variety of conditions like stroke, and specific injury recoveries for things like achilles tendon strain. "We are starting to perform studies to explore the benefits of using our device with older adults.

Thanks to an explosion in research in recent years exoskeletons, devices designed to augment and enhance mobility, are fast becoming a reality. But one obstacle to widespread adoption is the need for careful calibration. To work best, these devices need to be personalised to their users in a lab, and that's a problem if you want to produce a tool that can be used quickly and easily'out of the box'. Now, a team of researchers at Stanford University have developed an ankle exoskeleton that can adapt its assistance, while being worn by a user.

An exoskeleton boot that enables the wearer to walk 9 per cent faster than with normal shoes, and with 17 per cent less effort, has been revealed by scientists. Created at Stanford University, the robotic footwear comes with a motor that works with calf muscles to give the wearer an extra push with every step. The precisely-timed motor controls the boot so that it imparts a'torque' – a twisting force that can cause rotation around an axis – at the leg joint. The new creation could be widely used in everyday life, by people with mobility impairments or with physically demanding jobs, for example. The exoskeleton'boot' can adapt to the user to help people walk faster and more efficiently in real-world conditions.