http://www.sciencedump.com/content/bionic-boots-help-you-run-25-mph

Augmentation is a funny thing.  In science fiction you tend to see integration, bionics, different and intimate ways of meshing machines with humanity.  Superhero fiction and Steampunk tends to be where you find the true gadgeteering.

Experimenting on live people tends to be frowned upon, so oftentimes you see these technologies developing not only in parallel, but there is a certain amount of reinventing the wheel.  The end result seen in these bionic boots mimics the result seen in the “kangaroo” boots that are already on the market. Is the engineering that creates this effect exactly the same?  Probably not, but the end result (that we as the potential user experiences) is very similar.

You see the same kind of thing happening in “bionics” (I’m defining this as “limb replacement” for the purposes of this blog).  There are a half-dozen solutions for getting a replacement hand to close on an object.  Some are simple, mechanical levers and dials operated by the off-hand, some are directly hardwired into the muscles, some use a conductive surface to “read” impulses under the skin, but they all have a very similar end result.