Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to see someone skating the halls of Detroit’s Huntington Place convention center. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of interesting things happening at Automate these days, but it just never occurred to me that $1,400 footwear was a possibility.
For the record, that person was Abe Pleta, the lead mechanical and design integration engineer and third employee at Shift Robotics. The company’s name belies its focus – at least for now (who knows where future projects might take them). The product is a far cry from the hundreds of robotic arms that line the exhibition floor.
The startup ostensibly attended the event as a representative of the Pittsburgh Consortium — basically a small cluster of interesting companies in the area that also includes drone inventory company Gather AI. But there’s another interesting layer to its presence at the event: Shift is increasingly targeting the business market. It’s one of those unexpected potential market adjustments. People who work in warehouses walk a lot. The company’s Moonwalker shoes have the potential to help people walk smarter, not harder.
Image Credits: Switch Robotics
Shift was founded in 2018 by Xunjie Zhang, who went to study mechatronics at CMU after four years at Rolls-Royce. “He tried to get to work and was often late,” says Pleta. “He thought: ‘Okay, I’ll buy a scooter so I don’t have to look for parking spaces. And then I get hit by a car. I have to use the sidewalk. Walking is too slow. How can we make it faster?’ That is the origin of the idea.”
After years of developing what would become the Moonwalkers, the company launched a Kickstarter last October. With no significant marketing team to speak of, Shift still managed to get his hands on a viral hit, reaching his $95,000 goal in less than two days. Things slowed down a bit from there, but the company managed to pull in $329,000 by the end of the campaign.
In addition to the built-in PR, the crowdfunding campaign enabled Shift to determine that there was indeed a market for $1,400 semi-skating footwear. As the company expands and scales, it will be able to gradually lower that price. Pleta says the Moonwalkers have been sent to all backers, and now Shift is fulfilling post-Kickstarter purchases. With crowdfunding out of the way, the company plans to pick up a Series A this year.
I followed Pleta’s lead and took the Moonwalkers on the floor. The shoes have a total of ten wheels. There are four motorized two-wheel clusters and a pair of non-motorized wheels in the front. The thinking behind the latter is that the ball of the foot is used to activate the movement of the wheels – similar to roller skates/blades – so motorizing them can be a potential hazard. The wheels themselves are made of polyurethane.
![](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/DSC00460.jpg)
Image Credits: Switch Robotics
Pleta says George Powell, the founder and legend of Powell-Peralta Skateboards, gave him a crash course on wheels via email conversation. However, that is where his involvement with the company begins and ends. “He’s not involved at all,” Pleta says. “He said, ‘I want to stay in skateboarding. This is my world.'”
The Moonwalkers are very focused on mobility, although there is fun to be had. They can travel up to seven miles per hour – or about 2.5x a standard human gait. Pleta adds that you can actually get some speed on the moving walkway at the airport, closer to 20 mph. They should also get through airport security without much trouble.
Despite the name, the Moonwalkers are quite heavy at four pounds. That takes some getting used to. Your muscles will probably be a little sore after the first day. The weight is down to the drivetrains and battery – Shift says you should get about six miles on a charge, though there are a bunch of different variables, including grade.
The shoes themselves also take some getting used to. You leave your shoes on and adjust the Velcro over them. The wheels stay in place until you give the right shoe a heel pivot, which turns the white light on the side green. From there, the handling is rather like roller skates, only the shoes themselves do most of the heavy lifting. I found myself accidentally stopping them halfway through at points, which left me a bit confused. Pleta says the company is constantly tweaking the algorithms, which will be available via an OTA firmware update.
![](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/20230522_084618.jpg)
Image Credits: Brian Heating
Admittedly, I skated down half an aisle of a convention center and back. I’m pretty sure I’d get the hang of things pretty well after another 20 to 30 minutes.
The workplace path becomes interesting for the company. I compared it to the journey Magic Leap is currently undergoing, from $3,000 consumer headsets to business. Obviously there’s a lot more money to be made selling these things in bulk – although you have to jump through OSHA and other regulatory hoops.
“We’ll figure that out along the way,” Pleta says. “So far we have had zero injuries in five years of development. None of our lenders or clients have been injured to date.”