Nike’s Project Amplify is ‘an e-bike for your feet’

I slip on a pair of Nike running shoes. I clip a chunk of metal to the heel, which wraps around my lower leg like a shin guard. The battery goes on last, hugging it all like a high ankle bracelet.

In all of 30 seconds, I’ve turned my legs into robots. I’m wearing Nike’s new exoskeleton footwear, dubbed Project Amplify. 

My legs feel heavier for sure. But with each step, there’s a little kick in my heel. Like a cherry bomb exploding underfoot. And when it launches next year under a new name for an undisclosed price, Project Amplify will power runs up to 10 kilometers long on a single charge, increasing your energy output by 15% to 20% along the way.

“Think of it as an ebike for your feet,” says Michael Donaghu, a VP at Nike who leads the Project Amplify team.

The long road toward amplification

Exoskeletons offer the possibility to completely reimagine human movement, so it might not be surprising to learn that Nike has been pursuing the possibilities of exoskeletons for 14 years.

As Donaghu explains, he began at Nike decades ago working for the cofounder mad scientist running coach Bill Bowerman himself, who had a penchant for saying that an ounce on your foot was worth a pound on your back. As such, much of Nike innovation is about subtraction—eliminating weight to ensure the product doesn’t get in the way of your body. 

Nike’s marathon-busting Vaporfly shoes offered some rebuttal to this idea, as Nike studied the possibilities of energy return, developing carbon plates and foams that could give back an extra 4% of your stride. “What if, instead of playing subtraction, we could give you more?” Donaghu muses. And exoskeleton research was right along these lines, albeit taken to the extreme.

The problem a decade ago, however, was that the components needed for robotic assistance never quite added up. “The technology was too heavy, or not powerful enough,” Donaghu says. “The theory just didn’t play out in practice.”

Rather than dissuading Nike, Donaghu says it kept the company focused on the longer game—and every once in a while, a new PhD would walk through the doors and reignite interest in the idea, just to keep the coals burning. “I think you can have a lot of shared intuition as a group of designers and researchers, and sometimes technology just isn’t ready to do it, or you’re not smart enough to figure it out,” he says.

By 2021, the team opted to try again in earnest, dedicating full-time researchers to the project longer term. Quite a few developments helped. Algorithms, sensors, and microprocessors had all matured. But most of all, Donaghu credits the drone industry, fueled by a new wave of lightweight, high-RPM motors, with providing one of the most fundamental components of Project Amplify.

“That mass adoption made smaller, more energy-dense motors of the size that you would want to put on a body,” he says. 

Designing the first consumer-friendly exoskeleton

The design of Project Amplify is inspired by the human body. Developed in partnership with Dephy, it’s essentially a robotic version of your Achilles tendon—the connection between your calf muscles and heel that powers running and jumping. As you walk, onboard sensors track your gait and attempt to power your step at just the right moment. Donaghu likens the challenge to pushing someone on a swing. Too early, it feels weird. Too late, and it’s pointless. The task requires accuracy in the milliseconds, while accommodating for the fact that everyone’s gait is a little different.

Nike hasn’t mastered this work yet. As I take my first jog in Project Amplify, I find myself fighting the machine. I don’t feel puppeted, as I have with larger exoskeletons in the past, but I don’t feel like a super version of myself, either. Instead, there’s a bit too much pressure on my shin, and my heel slips slightly out of the shoe. Allow me to admit, it’s a bit infantilizing to find yourself struggling to run at Nike HQ, and I’m admittedly despondent when another tester trying Amplify for the first time flies by me effortlessly.

Tweaking the level of support and response time (simple buttons and sliders in an app) does help. And while I’m still a bit awkward, and the footwear never feels weightless, they also got my ass up a 500-foot training hill, leaving me reasonably but not devastatingly winded. 

For me, an elite running shoe feels like I’m running on flubber, and an e-bike can straight-up feel like driving a motorcycle. I wanted one sensation or the other in a way that wasn’t quite there yet in Project Amplify.

But taking it off? A dream! All you do is pull a tab on the heel, and the robot unlatches. I’m reminded of the handful of people necessary for me to don an exoskeleton pant made with Arc’teryx. Meanwhile, Nike really has developed something that I believe most people could slip on with relative ease. 

Polishing Amplify for launch

Despite the fact that hundreds of people have taken more than 2.4 million steps with Project Amplify, Donaghu knows the product isn’t fully cooked yet, and he’s even a bit self-conscious as the team shares a platform they’ve yet to perfect with journalists such as myself.

“Could we already be in the market right now? Yeah, we actually are getting really good functional testing results and feedback from most people. It just doesn’t meet the threshold of, like, is it swoosh-worthy yet?” he says. “I just think we have a responsibility to make sure that this thing ends up being really aspirational. Like, it really disappears visually. Functionally, it’s just something that’s there helping you. And if we can’t get to that threshold, then for some of us, it’s not going to be good enough.”

For now, Nike reaching that threshold means continuing to tweak the algorithms so that people like me don’t face a learning curve when using the product. He also suggests that the team still “has levers to pull” to lighten the technology while increasing its power output. And, of course, it has to look fire on your foot.

To this aim, the design team has developed a mockup of Project Amplify that’s more svelt, graceful, and all-around Nike-vibing than the chunkier prototypes they’ve built thus far. Now it’s just up to the poor engineering team to bring that vision to life.

As for where Project Amplify fits in the market, it’s too much power for competitive sport, but perfect for recreation. Longer term, Nike’s own CEO isn’t making any bold predictions about revenue potential or market size, but the writing is on the wall that the age of exoskeletons is coming. That’s especially for those aging with lower mobility—these technologies will revolutionize quality of life.

“There are so many ways that it doesn’t fit perfectly into our business model. It’s a bigger swing,” says Donaghu, who a few beats later admits that it feels wonderful to be making such a swing, to launch a product on the true edge of the company’s capabilities. “That’s Nike at its best, when we’re just being a little more bold to say we’re responsible for trying to change this industry and just help people move by and large. What are all the things that we’re not releasing that would do that?”

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