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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.

5 of 98 comments (clear)

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

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

  2. 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!

  3. 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
  4. 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.

  5. 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.