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Rechargeable Boots

Posted by michael on from the ground-pounder dept.

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.

12 of 98 comments (clear)

  1. Blinky lights... by Andorion · · Score: 3, Funny

    Now those little blinking lights on my cool Nike shoes can go on forever!!

    -Berj

  2. electric shoes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/22/183825 1&mode=thread

  3. It all fits together... by fsmunoz · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!)!

    This things do not happen be accident... people moan but eventually /. closes the circle!

  4. So... by kafka93 · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... would that be sole-ar powered?

    Doh!

  5. No actual power by pouwelse · · Score: 3, Informative
    Nice idea, but far from usefull.

    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.

    1. Re:No actual power by mikeage · · Score: 3, Informative

      Almost ;). The previous article was a piezoelectric design for the sole of the shoe... this uses two charged plates being moved through a magnetic field... according to the article, this one does 1/2W, soon to be boosted to 2W.

      --
      -- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
  6. Old hat by tomknight · · Score: 5, Informative
    (or should I say old shoe....?)

    The Electric Shoe Company sells these (or rather, a verion of them).

    Tom.

    --
    Oh arse
  7. Actual power 1/2 a watt, heading to 2 watts by Ezza · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.
    1. Re:Actual power 1/2 a watt, heading to 2 watts by pouwelse · · Score: 4, Informative
      From the article: >the prototype boot generates about half a > watt of power

      Because no technical details are available their is no way to know if this is the maximum power output during touchdown of the foot or the average power output during an average person walking at an average pace.

      My assumption is that the quoted 0.5 W is the delivered top power, not the average. This would be more in balance with existing technology. Otherwise they go directly for the next Nobel price for advancing current technology with a factor of 10,000 .

      As a guy who likes technology I hope they win the Noble price, but it is doubtfull.

      Just my 2 Eurocents,, Johan.

  8. Unforeseen dangers. by dinotrac · · Score: 3, Funny

    "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!!!!"

  9. Parasitic power by joel.neely · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  10. Previously Seen Story??? by Schwarzchild · · Score: 3, Informative
    Seems as if we've done a story before on shoes that generate electricity...

    Hmm....maybe maybe not but /. has certainly previously posted a story on human generated power.

    --

    "sweet dreams are made of this..."