Someday, Charge Your Smartphone Simply By Walking
Tom Krupenkin and Ashley Taylor from the University of Wisconsin-Madison believe that we may be able to power our mobile devices such as cell phones simply by walking.
In an article published in Nature Communications, the two researchers describe a new approach of using kinetic energy to charge batteries.
"Humans, generally speaking, are very powerful energy-producing machines," said Krupenkin, a UW-Madison professor of mechanical engineering. "While sprinting, a person can produce as much as a kilowatt of power."
If it was possible to even use a fraction of that energy, there could be enough power to run virtually any gadget in our possession.
"What has been lacking is a mechanical-to-electrical energy conversion technology that would work well for this type of application," Krupenkin said.
In their paper, the researchers describe an approach of "reverse electrowetting" which enables mechanical energy to be converted to electrical energy by using a micro-fluidic device consisting of thousands of "liquid micro-droplets interacting with a novel nano-structured substrate."
Krupenkin believes that this technology, which could be integrated in footwear, for example, could capture the energy created by a walking human and gain about 20 watts of power. Normally, that energy would be converted to heat. "Unlike a traditional battery, the energy harvester never needs to be recharged, as the new energy is constantly generated during the normal walking process," a press release stated.
The scientists envision two different uses for their invention. It could either be used to directly power mobile devices or it could be integrated with a Wi-Fi hotspot This allows users to seamlessly utilize the energy generated by the harvester without having to physically connect their mobile devices to the footwear. Such a configuration "dramatically reduces the power consumption of wireless mobile devices and allows them to operate for much longer time without battery recharge," the researchers said.
"You cut the power requirements of your cellphone dramatically by doing this," Krupenkin noted. "Your cell phone battery will last 10 times longer."
There was no information when this technology could become commercially available.
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This is a great invention!
Someday, Charge your phone by sitting on your a- Oh wait...
that would help maintain a healthy America...........
Why not add this to everything mechanical? I see almost more use for this on things that move a lot more than a lot of people I know.
How long a person walk a day? 1 hr? That would not be enough to power a cellphone.
I see two problems with this. One: americas cell phones would never be charged, unless plugged into the wall. Two: why do we have to invent technology that leads to our own demise? (spelling?)
it looks that technology develops constantly. I'm lovin this new battery.
Should also invent something to charge your battery while talking.
They should just invent a way to charge a phone by the rate of someone's pulse and call it a day.
The Matrix....
Imagine combining this with wireless electricity.
Everybody keeps talking about it as if you can take, say, 20W of walking power and use whatever percentage of it to convert to electricity.
If one person burns 20W of energy to walk a certain distance, you will need additional energy to power up whatever it is you need to power up. Remember, those 20W were REQUIRED to do that amount of walking, and muscles will generate heat in the process, no matter what. The ONLY way you could make this work out of those 20W would be to capture and convert the heat (as a by-product of powering the motion) to electricity. because our bodies have a very good temperature homeostasis (look it up), we don't burn somebody if they tough us after a walk, the heat is dissipated by our entire body, not only our legs. That footwear device would be not converting or capturing the heat-dissipated energy, will just make walking a bit harder to generate the extra energy ,because:
- one will have to burn the 20W of power to walk PLUS some wattage to power up the devices. There is no way around it (look up thermodynamics). Any device that does that will inherently make walking harder to provide the extra energy (plus the losses in converting process).
Everybody keeps talking about it as if you can take, say, 20W of walking power and use whatever percentage of it to convert to electricity. If one person burns 20W of energy to walk a certain distance, you will need additional energy to power up whatever it is you need to power up. Remember, those 20W were REQUIRED to do that amount of walking, and muscles will generate heat in the process, no matter what. The ONLY way you could make this work out of those 20W would be to capture and convert the heat (as a by-product of powering the motion) to electricity. because our bodies have a very good temperature homeostasis (look it up), we don't burn somebody if they tough us after a walk, the heat is dissipated by our entire body, not only our legs. That footwear device would be not converting or capturing the heat-dissipated energy, will just make walking a bit harder to generate the extra energy ,because:- one will have to burn the 20W of power to walk PLUS some wattage to power up the devices. There is no way around it (look up thermodynamics). Any device that does that will inherently make walking harder to provide the extra energy (plus the losses in converting process).
They are not talking about the heat energy created and used by our body. They are talking about grabbing the kinetic energy created by our movement. Every time you step, there is a force exerted on the sole of each foot. The heat energy they are referring to is the friction that is generated by your foot coming in contact with the ground.
"the two researchers describe a new approach of using kinetic energy to charge batteries"
"What has been lacking is a mechanical-to-electrical energy conversion technology that would work well for this type of application,"
This idea is not necessarily new as they have had wrist watches that keep themselves "charged" from a persons movement for years.
I can't see this catching at all. Too much trouble.
Americans dont walk, we drive. What would be really cool is if we could invent something that could charge our devices in the car....
Besides, the weight issues in america have nothing to do with activity (most people do too much, and do not suffer for lack of activity). The problem is almost 100% diet. When you are too busy you eat out, and fast food is crap. When you are too busy then you need caffeine and sugar, and then you drink too much soda. If we did less, and stayed at home more we would eat healthier and loose a lot of weight.
When I lost my job last year I also lost 50 pounds in the 3 months I was out of work. Sure I wasn't doing much, but I wasn't eating hardly anything because I want hungry. My current job isn't nearly as physically taxing, and I have the flexibility to bring in my own food and am keeping the weight off.
Y not use arms? All the people have the phones attached to their hands already.
How about gassing up your car by walking? After all, it's like the saying, 'a penny saved is a penny earned', but just gets morphed a little bit to 'a drop of fuel saved is a drop of fuel dropped in the tank.'
I wonder if they are targetting this at physically challeneged (read obese) people .... but then I could be wrong.