Picture the scene: you need to go to the minimart to grab some milk and you know you shouldn’t take your V8 coupe because it’s only round the corner and that would be so lazy. But you can’t be bothered to dig your bike out from the back of the garage, the store owner won’t let you bring your electric scooter inside, you can’t be bothered to walk because you’re too impatient and you can’t run there because you’re too unfit (and the milk would be churned into butter by the time you got back).

So what’s someone with a thirst for cow juice and too much money to spend on insane crowd-funded electric mobility solutions to do? One answer is get a pair of $1,399 Shift Moonwalkers. The motorized sneakers were revealed last year on Kickstarter with the aim of raising $90,000, but have since netted over $329,000 and the first pairs are being delivered to early backers this month.

Though they look like a hi-tech take on 1950s roller skates and fit over your existing sneakers in the same way, each shoe has 10 wheels, not four, and those wheels are staggered to help improve stability on uneven ground.

And unlike classic skates, they don’t freewheel, which means you can stop quickly (in about 3 ft / 1 m) and walk up stairs. The wheels are driven by a DC motor which relies on AI software to stop and start in synch with your normal walking movements. But your normal walking speed is boosted by 2.5 times, giving you a top speed of around 7 mph (11 kmh). The shoes charge via a USB-C cable in 90 minutes and give a range of 6.5 miles (10 km).

Related: D-Fly Dragonfly Is A Four-Wheel Carbon E-Scooter With A 50-Mile Range

Shift Robotics, the company that has spent over five years working on the techy shoes, claims it takes the average user just 10 steps to get the hang of using them, but after seeing them in action we think it’ll take the average bystander a whole lot more time to wrap their head around what they’re seeing when you glide by looking like you’re on your own personal travelator.

At a hair under $1,400 to order today for summer delivery (early bird investors got in for $799), these AI shoes certainly aren’t cheap, but then you could pay that for an electric scooter which you wouldn’t be able to thrown into a backpack, and plenty of sneaker geeks will pay that for limited edition shoes that require you to do all the work.

Can you imagine Moonwalkers, or something similar, becoming a common sight on sidewalks?