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REAL LIFE NEWS: GO FOR A WALK AND CHARGE UP YOUR PHONE

by Hazed

If you're out for a walk and you suddenly realize your mobile phone has run out of power, soon you won't have to worry because US researchers have come up with a way to generate electricity from human motion.

The device can be placed in a shoe, where it captures the energy of moving micro-droplets and converts it into electrical current. This kinetic charging is already used in some low power devices such as sensors and watches but the new technology could produce enough to power a mobile.

"Humans, generally speaking, are very powerful energy-producing machines," Professor Tom Krupenkin said. He's from the Uniersity of Wisconsin's mechanical engineering department, who has published a study on this idea.

"While sprinting, a person can produce as much as a kilowatt of power." Hang about, who said anything about sprinting? This is supposed to work when you go for a walk, not a run!

The next problem to solve is getting the power from the conversion device in the shoe, to the phone or laptop that needs to be charged. You could just plug a USB cable into your footwear but that's hardly going to be practical.

So the next idea is to have the wireless transmitter part of the phone moved into the shoe itself - that's the part that makes contact with the remote base stations, and it's the most power-hungry part of what a mobile phone does. Then signals could be sent to the handset via bluetooth or wifi.

The two scientists behind this idea have now formed a company to commercialise this technology, so maybe it'll be available in a couple of years.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14647639

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