| Novel motorised shoes ready to roll into stores | Send to a friend |
| Sunday, 15 January 2012 11:00 |
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A user straps the motorized skates on to their shoes and away they go, gliding smoothly along at speeds of up to 10 miles per hour (16 kilometres per hour). The futuristic shoes are the brainchild of Mr Peter Treadway, a Los Angeles-based industrial designer. "I've been developing some form of wearable transportation since the 1990s but just in the last, say like eight years, I realized the real necessity for it," Mr Treadway told AFP."I was going to lunch one day and couldn't find a place to park," he said. "So I thought 'Why don't I make something that could get me from home to someplace really close by?' "It's just turned into this fun kind of product." Mr Treadway said each shoe has a battery and a motor and they are synchronized to work together as "sort of mirrors of each other." The rechargeable battery allows the wearer to go about two to three miles (3-5 kilometres) on a single charge and needs about two to three hours to fully juice up again.A handheld wireless remote controller smaller than a deck of cards controls the speed of shoes. "It's very simple," Mr Treadway said. Not everyone finds the shoes easy to use at first, however. Training wheels are provided to take the pain out of the learning process. "To achieve some proficiency could take you anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours," Mr Treadway said.Some of the money for the spnKiX was raised on Kickstarter, a website which collects donations for creative projects. (AFP) Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
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