Slashdot Mirror
Rechargeable Boots
Fancypants writes: "ABCNews.com has posted an article about a Menlo Park, CA company that is developing boots that generate power. Imagine charging your cell phone by walking to class." Seems as if we've done a story before on shoes that generate electricity, but I sure don't see it in the archives.
Now those little blinking lights on my cool Nike shoes can go on forever!!
-Berj
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/22/183825 1&mode=thread
You could make a shoe that smells your feet and applies deodorant when needed... wow
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
story here
This boots could generate the initial energy needed by this Hydrogen-Based Rotary Engine, and with that the uptime of this IBM Linux clock would be astonishing (and with that kind of energy, imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!)!
/. closes the circle!
This things do not happen be accident... people moan but eventually
... would that be sole-ar powered?
Doh!
... prototype boot generates about half a watt of power -- more than enough energy to recharge the boot's built-in battery and a cell phone
Babelfish + ear = Translation.
Boot + ass = statement.
Boot + ear = ???
No, I don't think it's going to be a hit.
I'd like to know how much power you can actualy get out of these boots. Charging a cellphone does not need much, but providing just enough for the discman only when you are running would be pretty incentive for us nerds to do some sports, huh?
The previous Slashdot article on this topic gives actual numbers: 0.0013 W when walking normally.
This fluffy article gives no numbers on the performance, but with their menthod it should not come even close to being realistic. When you do the math it is theoretically possible to get resonable amount of power from your shoes, but the technology is still experimental.
As one of the developers of an Open Hardware PDA I can say that you can only do very litte computation for that and it would require an afternoon of walking to scrape enough energy together for a cell phone call.
Just my 2 Eurocents,
Johan.
What exactly does a power generating device need a battery for ? the article mentions that it can recharge its own battery I hope the hell it can other wise using it just to power its self to provide power to you..... Ok that really doesn't make sense I have a 5kW generator it does not have a battery (granted it could to get it started but I can do that and I assume the shoes can too) but that the whole thing about the piezo (sp?) electricity nature of this device that it doesn't need that so I repeat ( I may have missed it in the article but why exactly does this need an on board battery except as a buffer in which I can think of other way off the top of my head capacitors hopefully someone can clarify this for me
This must be Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.
"But will they run Linux"
(Insert jokes about bootstrapping, etc....)
Tom.
Oh arse
thats great, but whos gonna walk around and try to use a laptop at the same time? do people 'walk' these days???
Lizard "Never let them set limits on your mind!"
The Electric Shoe Company sells these (or rather, a verion of them).
Tom.
Oh arse
His idea was to use this system of information transmission to enable data-rich handshakes (using connected HUDs) among other things.
From the article (you did read it right?):
>the prototype boot generates about half a watt of
>power -- more than enough energy to recharge the boot's built-in battery and
>a cell phone. But Pelgrine hopes that by the end of January the boot's output
>could be raised to nearly two watts
I'm a perfectionist but I'm trying to cut back.
...give's a whole new meaning to the phrase, "she's got an electrifying walk".
____
Sometimes the voices in my head speak over each other. This is one of those times.
"Seems as if we've done a story before on shoes that generate electricity, but I sure don't see it in the archives."
I'm tired.
and they think I know what I'm doing....
Trevor Baylis, of Wind Up Radio fame, is also working on this kind of technology. The approaches are pretty standard, and are ALL dependent on new materials which combine the ability to generate a current from flexing motion with a long lived flexibility to withstand many 100,000s of flexes over a number of years - often of highly variable force (walking vs running for example).
At the moment the energy that can be created from these is tiny, roughly analagous to the energy created in a self winding watch mechanism pound for pound.
This is going nowhere fast.
The article clearly states thet current models output one watt, with 2 watts projected by launch.
"Baby, when I kiss you, it makes my toes tingle."
"Oh, John, John, I want...Wait a minute! Are you wearing those boots again?"
"My feet were cold, hon. That's all. Cold feet. They don't mean a thing to me."
"I knew it. You were kissing me, but you were thing of them. You've been running around on me. You heel. You're nothing but a leather whore"
"No, baby, honest. It's not like that at all. Sure, the boots and me were an item once, but we're just friends now. C'mon, baby. Can't a guy have friends?"
"You can have all the damned friends you want, John. I'm leaving you. Oh, and just so you'll know: I'm stopping by the shoe store on my way out."
"No-o-o-o-o-o!!!!"
Trevor Baylis (inventor fo the clockwork radio) came up with this idea a few years back.
The good folks at the MIT Media Lab (especially under the Things That Think research program) have been researching such things for years.
The July/August issue of IEEE Micro contains several articles on their work, including one on parasitic power.
The wwearable computing crowd at MIT and University of Toronto have been working on this stuff for at least 3 years now. I remember seeing a prototype piezoelectric shoe generator at MIT in 1997. I believe the reasearch was done in the same lab as the PAN (personal Area Network) which allows data exchange through skin contact... AKA a handshake will transfer your business card to the other person's wearable computer.
from what I read at the links this is either a product based on the MIt research or someone re-inventing the wheel.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There is only one problem with these boots. Most likely, only geeks would use something like this since regular people tend to be techno-phobes. Unless these shoes can charge a laptop battery on a trip to the soda machine, I don't think that most geeks (not all, just most) would walk around enough to charge anything :)
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Hmm....maybe maybe not but /. has certainly previously posted a story on human generated power.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
What the couch potatoes who lounge about with their electronic gadgets instead of getting out and about really need is a way to generate electricity from sitting around munching fries and playing with all these electronic toys.
Calum
--
Calum I Mac Leod, Scottish Borders.
Now i can attach a sound system to my feet to play pimping music while I strut down the street, about time.
And don't even mention the people who won't get off their fat ass but insist on driving and talking on cell phones and nearly killing a certain computer programmer, who shall continue to remain nameless, every morning. Don't!
:wq
The previous article was a piezoelectric design for the sole of the shoe... this uses two charged plates being moved through a magnetic field...
That happens to be how piezo electrics work.
http://www.qinetiq.com/applications/qinetiq/new
Even very small amounts of power can be useful in particular circumstances.
ZZZ online had this story to a while ago in issue 73.
I have been generating electricity by wearing my socks and walking on carpet for years! Of course, I lose it all when I touch a door handle...
What a great idea - but I'd be worried about how they'd behave in bad weather? Being a Canadian and all, they'd definitely have to be water, snow and salt resisitent. I wouldn't want to worry about getting electrocuted by my own footwear. I suppose the rubber soles would prevent that, but still...
1) They only work on wool carpeting.
2) You have to shuffle your feet when you walk.
*f*
...solves power problem with U.S. Army Land
Warrior program
".Sig Stealer" was here
The more power you generate from these boots, the harder walking becomes. I'm not sure I'd like to generate a few watts of power at the expense of lower back problems.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/10/20/044524 2&mode=flat
Wire in a 20V 1A cap. put it on one of those trick handshake things.
Go to a Micro$oft convention.
Drop 'em like fly's
"Hi my name is.... oops dosen't matter"
hehe
Just push it and it will... Er. Wait a minute. Dang, back to the drawing board.
Insert
They'll start running around whenever they need a little extra power. I can seriously see this as a huge motivator for people to excercise.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
... and Muad Dib will defeat the emperor ??
ok, so maybe its just me
but after a 20 minutes fast walking my feet can generate enough 'gas' to power a small town (so people tell me)
I'll think of a funny sig later on
Who remembers Maxwell Smart's shoe-phone from the tv show Get Smart? I do! the Shoe phone @ CIA.GOV and now an excerpt... Operator: "What number are you calling?" Smart: "I'm calling Control, Operator..." Operator: "You have dialed incorrectly. Give me your name and address and your dime will be refunded." Smart: "Operator, I'm calling from my shoe!" Operator: "What is the number of your shoe?" Smart: "It's an unlisted shoe, Operator!"
Elan Hasson
-----------------
Visit the Programmer's Resource at http://www.compiled.org
But the funding is coming from a defense source. The primary application isn't cellphones and Walkmans and such. Soliders have to carry a significant load of batteries while on the march. The energies produced from these boots by marching could lessen this burden.
I remember more than a year ago MIT media lab working on strapped on comps powered by human movement doing financial transactions. retro it is...
Just imagine, while running during PE... a prankster with some new shoes could charge up a battery. Later, while in the locker room, he (or she possibly) could shock one of his buddies without having to be on a carpet. A kid with shoes like that could be the envy of the entire school! I think I've seen the Emperor zap Luke one too many times.
Live wrong, impostor.
OK, here is an idea on how to "build" electric boots. I am giving it away free, to the public domain. Hell, it might already be patented, I don't know...
Build a boot with a fairly rigid upper, or with a frame around the upper, in such a manner that there is a semi-flexible pivot and a fully flexible pivot around the ankle (in other words, make it flexible in the full range of motion of the ankle, but try to keep it mostly flexible in the "normal" direction of motion, in line with the rest of the leg.
Around this pivot you would need a gear system, with maybe a ratchet and small flywheel system (like the baycomm radio), so that as the ankle flexes, the flywheel is spun at a high rate of speed. Perhaps even make it spring loaded, so that when standing still, or during mid-stride, the flywheel continues to run for a short while.
Attach a small generator (one of those cheesy 3V motors would be perfect if made a bit more robust), and tap the power.
Feasible? Sounds reasonable to me, though perhaps a little bulky - but I bet with good design, it could be slimmed down and made to work rather well...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Plenty of electricity.
There was an Italian soft-pron movie about 20 years ago that did the same sort of thing. Used special sensors placed under matresses, and generated power when the people in the bed, er, engaged in recreational activities.
I'd be willing to fund research....
So it makes 0.5W (peak, probably, not continuous). What about those wristwatches that never need replacement batteries? The idea being that the back-and-forth motion of your arm is converted to electrical energy and stored in a rechargeable battery. I dunno how they work exactly, but I know those watches are really expensive. Seems like this would be a more efficient way to get power, since your feet spend more time accelerating back and forth than they spend compressing the soles.