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Knee Brace Generates Electricity From Walking
ktulus cry brings news of a device that can power portable gadgets, prosthetic joints, and other mobile appliances by harvesting energy generated by walking. Researchers are working on making the device — still a moderately cumbersome 3.5 pounds — smaller while maintaining its energy harvesting capacity. CNet has a write-up with more pictures and a diagram of the device.
"In the mode in which the brace is only activated while the knee is braking, the subjects required less than one watt of extra metabolic power for each watt of electricity they generated. A typical hand-crank generator, for comparison, takes an average of 6.4 watts of metabolic power to generate one watt of electricity because of inefficiencies of muscles and generators. A lighter version would be helpful to hikers or soldiers who don't have easy access to electricity. And the scientists say similar mechanisms could be built into prosthetic knees other implantable devices such as pacemakers or neurotransmitters that today require a battery, and periodic surgery to replace that battery."
by walking under heavy rain?
A lighter version would be helpful to hikers or soldiers who don't have easy access to electricity.
Sergeant: Private!
Private: Sir!
Seargeant: Walk faster! We're trying to reach HQ.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Walmart customers, I think if we can get them walking with these on, we'll solve all of our energy needs! Think about it. The entire country powered by fat, Cheetoes, Doritoes, Beer, etc.... And, with all of these large folks walking, they'll be in better health and therefore reduce the burden on our health care system ( one of the biggest expenses the Medicare has to deal with is kidney dialysis because folks fry their kidneys from hypertension. ).
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Care to explain how this statement, as it stands, does not conflict with the 2nd law of Thermodynamics?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Thats neat. But wouldn't it be more efficient for us slashdotters if it was put on our arms... Depending on which one is using the mouse... Or... Umm... The one not holding the lotion bottle?
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Sounds like a violation of energy conservation.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Knee Brace makes walking harder - Segway sees potential market opening
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
At least this finally makes some sense out of Naked Snake's whole "walk around to recharge the battery" thing. Does this device generate enough power to operate a soliton radar?
When someone comes up with one that can convert talking into usable energy, let me know. I have several women in my office that could generate enough power to light a small country!
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to think "profiling is worse than the slaughter of innocent people..."
it's so heavy right now because they made all the parts easily replaceable to the scientists working on it. The scientist they interviewed on it also mentioned that if you stop wearing it, you tend to swing your leg harder for the first 3-10 steps, unaccustomed to the now-unpresent braking by the device. Really neat idea... while it makes sense to me, I didn't realize we actually braked our legs as we walked forward.
-- Who is the bigger fool? The fool or the fool who follows him? --
Someday all that exercise equipment in gyms will reclaim all their expended human energy into powering their own devices. Since even top performers like Lance Armstrong produce only 500W for under 20min, maybe we can just hope that exercisers can work off their lighting bill, if not heat their showers.
Hikers with a body suit, though, might be able to cook their dinner.
--
make install -not war
Oh. Oh, I see. Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what's coming to you. I'll bite your legs off!
A study in Holland disagrees about the savings from obesity reduction:
A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
This will
SCNR
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
In the mode in which the brace is only activated while the knee is braking, the subjects required less than one watt of extra metabolic power for each watt of electricity they generated. A typical hand-crank generator, for comparison, takes an average of 6.4 watts of metabolic power to generate one watt of electricity because of inefficiencies of muscles and generators.
That is a bogus comparison, the arm and leg muscles are too different. A fair comparison might be bicycle based generator. Junk like this makes my think hype not science. Well less than one watt in and a full watt out makes me think not science as well.
A use for Heather Mills!
Anybody got a whip?
I wonder how long until they pair this with a water tight hydration recycling suit and we chase worms in the desert?
lol: You see no door there!
As a guy who has had constant pain in his knees for the past 7 years, I am warning you that something like that may permanently damage your knee joint by simply forcing a minuscule change to the way your knee rotates while walking. I mean if unfitting shoes can hurt your knee, foot and hip joints (and they can) then this device may certainly hurt all of those joints as well if it forces you to change the way your legs are naturally moving.
Don't damage your joints, the pain may last for the rest of your life.
You can't handle the truth.
it makes us look more like the Borg.
Yawn - the Economist had an extensive article on this last week.
It is sad when we get scooped by a large conservative economic journal that is only periphally concerned with technology.
If the fanboys on this site could focus on posting something besides "Linux is better than evil Microsoft" we might get Slashdot back to being the premier site for propagating techy news for geeks.
Really horrible idea, good knees are what people miss the most as people get older. I wouldn't want to trade 10 years of good knees just charge up my cell phone. Furthermore if I was a hiker or soldier walking all day, I wouldn't want extra stuff attached to my leg actually impeding my leg movements for a few extra watts of electrical energy.
If you could develop a smaller one that fits over a beer-drinker's elbow.
Or how about a micro one that works off a woman's jaw muscles? No, wait, that means their cellphone batteries would never quit. Yikes!
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Walmart shoppers can walk? Most I see park in handicapped and get around on tiny electric scooters.
My campus is incrediably hilly, and there are some hills where it is just more comfortable to run down. Would this thing have any effect on steep hills, I wonder?
I don't know much about how the knee functions, but it seems like I do a lot more of this 'braking' in the last 50 ft of my trek to class than anywhere else
But...what if we used them as fuel? I'll bet the researchers didn't consider that!
This weekend, the CBC radio program Quirks and Quarks had an interview with Dr. Max Donelan. You can listen to the interview in either ogg or mp3 format at http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/07-08/feb09.html
to power an exoskeleton. The power source is right where you need it and you no longer have to carry those heavy batteries!!
A similar thing is going on with anti-smoking campaigns and mandatory seat-belt laws. With less people smoking, there are less people dying earlier of lung-related illnesses. With mandatory seat-belt laws, we're seeing a decrease in the number of viable organs for organ donation.
I've seen that. It's very interesting. I think what's really ironic is that the tobacco companies have done a similar study (This is the closest I could find after several pages of Google hits) a few years ago and it was a PR disaster for them. But now, a similar study regarding obesity has come to the same conclusion that early death benefits society but without the PR disaster. Interesting isn't it?
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
to power the exoskeleton. Power is generated just where you need it, and you don't have to carry any big heavy batteries!
I've heard smokers make the same argument. By dieing young they save the NHS money in expensive geriatric care. It's probably true, since it's far cheaper to let someone die untreated of something essentially untreatable like lung cancer or a sudden heart attack than it is to keep them alive for years in a old people's home.
Not that the NHS sees it that way of course, they're discussing refusing operations for people who are obese or smokers.. Not all people with self control issues are punished though. Heroin is free on the NHS if you get yourself hooked.
Mind you most people end up paying for private nursing homes since the NHS ones are so grotty. And if the NHS refuses to pay for parts of your lung cancer treatment, you can't just pay for that part, you need to pay for the whole lot. So you don't have a choice about paying National Insurance, but they can decide not to pay for drugs that would keep you alive. If you don't like it, you need to pay for the whole cost of the treatment. It's sort of like an HMO that you're legally obliged to contribute to. In fact avoiding National Insurance can lead to prison since it legally considered a tax.
You'd think things like this and the obviously dismal state of NHS dentistry would put Americans off the concept of socialized health care, but quite often they'll joke about British teeth and then enthusiastically advocate it without seeing the link between the two.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I go to the gym a lot and there are like 200 people on treadmills when I go. Does anyone know what stops us from generating power from the hamster people?
IF this idea is feasible then, PATENT PENDING (C) 2008 ME
Hey great, now Guantanamo detainees can electrocute their own genitals just by being marched around!
I'm not a smoker.
:).
;).
But that's why I don't understand why so many of those socialist european countries are so against smoking, when they are so worried about "aging population" and creaking health services.
Sure discourage people from smoking, and educate them on the dangers. But don't make it impossible.
Tax tobacco enough and the smokers pay for their own "funeral" and everyone else's
If smokers survive past retirement age, they'll still be paying tobacco taxes. Give the best "donors" a cert of appreciation or something
A lot of the antismoking stats seem to assume that nonsmokers never die. Worse - some even use the potential lost future earnings of a smoker who dies early as a "cost", which is _bullshit_. Smokers dying early means you don't need to support them later. Unless they are dying so early ( <25 ) when they haven't yet fully paid for the cost of bringing them up etc.
Maybe a smoker dying at 40 or 50, from lung cancer might be expensive. But dying from some other cancer is quite expensive too, and if the "nanny state" country has to take care of them from 60 till 80 when they finally die it gets more expensive.
As for obesity. IMO dying from a heart attack isn't that bad a way to go. But diabetes is.
who would have thought that the six million dollar man could be the answer to the world's energy crisis?
Do do do do do! Ba ba ba ba ba!
The article with graphic:
http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/07-08/feb09.html
The Interview (in OGG & MP3 formats) :
http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/media/2007-2008/ogg/qq-2008-02-09_01.ogg
http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/media/2007-2008/mp3/qq-2008-02-09_01.mp3
Perhaps they should therefore invent a dynamo-wired fridge door, beer can ring pull, or perhaps a sofa cushion...
looky here
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/02/049254&from=rss
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
How does an article demonstrating that people are actually doing this show that people likely won't do this?
--
make install -not war
the subjects required less than one watt of extra metabolic power for each watt of electricity they generated.
Perpetual motion machines are impossible! How many time we gotta tell ya? Either the magnets eventually lose their magnetic "charge", or you finish digesting the potato and have to eat another one!
I could see where a long term healthy person might cost more than a short term obese person, but did they include the extra taxes and/or health insurance premiums a person might generate if they didn't die of a heart attack at 40?
As a consequence, whatever energy is used to power such a device needs to be measured against that yard stick.
It's kind of like using an electric stove. One can (for example) burn natural gas to power a generator to power your stove, with, at best 20% efficiency (the nat gas turbine isn't super eficient, and then its dumped into electric lines that are lossy, and then it goes to your stove, which also has loss.) The result? You're beter off burning nat gas directly to cook your food...
Same with this gizmo. You;'re better off using rechargable batteries...
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
In The Dilbert Future, Scott Adams suggested the logical consummation of this, and really the most complelling way of harnessing "stupidity for clean power(tm)".
The proposal is pretty ingenious: First, you build a bunch of large hamster-wheel type contraptions in front of gas stations and convenience stores. The energy generated by people running in the wheels is hooked either to the grid or electrolysis for Hydrogen production. Then, you offer a 10 free lottery tickets per every 15 minutes in the wheel.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
The entire country powered by fat, Cheetoes, Doritoes, [...]
"Cheetoes"? "Doritoes"? Dan Quayle, is that you?!
On a kids show called "Lets Get Inventin", Alex Drinkwater built exactly this device - and got a full working prototype going.
As you can see by the picture (half way down this article) direct image link the design is not only identical - it's BETTER with a built-in cellphone carrier! Somebody, give the kid his patent!
No one will buy into one of these if it isn't comfortable to wear.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Walking/running roughly burns one calorie per pound per mile. You need to burn roughly 3500 calories to lose a pound. The average basal matabolic rate in an average person burns about 1500 calories So a 330 pound person, could subsist on vitamins and water, and walk across the entire USA, and arrive at a svelte 120 pounds.
I picked a reasonable pace of 3 MPH for 15 hours a day, which would get you across the country in 66 days, using an additional 28 pounds for the basal metabolic rate.
..........FULL STOP.
Actually, there is concern that this device may cause muscles to atrophy. It works by helping slow down your leg during the part of each step where your quadriceps "slow down" your leg. Similar to how electric cars use "regenerative breaking" to slow the car down and gain back energy.
In fact, theoretically when this device gets light and exact enough, walking can take less effort than without the device!
Thanks Denny
1178161 is prime...
Walking? In Wal-Mart? Around here, the Manatee is far from extinct, and gets around Wal-Mart in a battery-powered scooter.
Skip an item? Hit reverse, beep beep beep, and get it off the shelf.
I'd be more likely to think the average age of death for obese people/smokers would be closer to 60, at this point you're on government paid pensions in my country. Healthy people could be running on welfare dollars for 30 years more.
And it doesn't weigh 3.5 pounds, either.
Most people don't even think inside the box.
Hello Slashdot community. My name is Max Donelan and I am one of the inventors of this energy harvesting technology. I thought I might try and clear up some of the misconceptions that people have about what we did. Here goes.
When you walk, your muscles are constantly taking some of your mechanical energy away from your body and dissipating it as heat. Other muscles (or even the same muscles at a later time) are acting to put mechanical energy back in to the system. This is a little like stop-and-go driving. Perhaps more accurately, it is like driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake. While walking this way may not sound like a good idea, it is what we do. We can take advantage of the fact that walking is inherently uneconomical to generate electricity economically. The idea is to use a generator to help the muscles in taking away the mechanical energy. But instead of dissipating it all as heat like muscles, the generator also produces some electricity.
Here is a thought experiment that may make it a little clearer. If you stand up from your chair, your muscles that run down the front of your leg act to extend the knee. They increase your mechanical energy because by the time you are standing you have more gravitational potential energy. When you sit back down, the same muscles are active but now their job is to take the energy away from your body and dissipate it as heat (your kinetic energy is the same whether you are standing or sitting but your potential energy is less when you are sitting). Unlike traditional car brakes, your muscles require substantial "gas" (i.e. food) to decrease the energy of the system. And muscles are totally different than an electric motor - if you run an electric motor in reverse it takes mechanical energy and produces electric energy (i.e. a generator) but when you run muscles in reverse, they don't take mechanical energy and produce chocolate bars (i.e. food or chemical energy).
OK, back to the thought experiment. If we were to couple a generator to your knee motion, it would always resist the motion. So, it would make it harder to stand up and easier to sit down. It would produce electricity in both directions. What if we had some way to engage and disengage the generator and we disengaged it when you are going from a sit to a stand and engaged it when you are going from a stand to a sit. While this would only produce electricity for half the time, it would actually make the whole task easier. You can get electricity and lower the effort required to do the task! Of course this requires you to already have the need to do the task and that is why it makes more sense to do it during walking.
For the commenters that think it is too heavy, they are right. We are a year in to the next version and you can check it out on http://www.bionic-power.com/ The graphic on the splash page will give you an idea of what it will look like. It will be less than 1 kg.
With regards to other energy harvesting technologies, I think they are all pretty cool. My favorite is the self-winding watch. The drawback is that it gets only about 5 micro watts. The shoes are all very cool and will likely serve a real need but they also get much smaller amounts of power. If you are already carrying a heavy load, the backpack is fantastic.
I am enjoying reading your comments so keep them coming!
What happens when you play DDR while wearing it?
This sounds like an ideal device for kids to charge up their XO notebooks.
That's a pretty good deal. Assuming lottery tickets cost $1 and payout 50% (common), that's $5 per 15 minutes or $20 an hour.
It's a shame it generates electricity while walking. It'd probably be better if it zapped you because you weren't walking enough.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3A+skim
the relevant result
"to quickly read something to get a general idea of its contents"
if you skim the link I posted, you'll find the well reasoned on topic posts indicate,
"it's not going to work."
the amount of energy required for just lighting is not going to be recovered from the equipment.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I guess the real problem is with my original short reply.
instead of "Likely no" I should have been more clear.
so specifically, to the comment" I think their body work could power those lights pretty well, offloading from the grid quite a bit."
my response should have been, "likely no, it will only offload from the grid by a tiny insignifcant useless amount, so small that even
the cost of setting up the equipment will be more expensive in terms of energy generation to make the changes, and connect the device to the grid, and make it all work"
YES, people ARE doing it, I agree. However, it's not "Offloading from the grid quite a bit" nor is it likely to ever offload from the grid to any amount useful.
that's the point I find worthy of my original rebut. The ability of a room full of people to power a room full of lights is not there.
picture the amount of gym space required to have 100 people in equipment use at peak times alone, you'd have at least 10% more machines than that, and space inbetween.
that's a large darn room, and more than 100 light bulbs at gym lighting levels... you are going to have supply that goes up and down constantly- so yes, massive electrical work required to either store the juice or keep it flowing to/from the city connection (and to break the connection in case of a failure outside)
It's possible to do, it's being done, but the supposed benefit isn't there, and won't be there. I was just too snarky in my reply.
some on point specific references from that discussion
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=224812&cid=18212120
"We've done some testing with semi-pro cyclists, and the conclusion we've come to is that the typical in-shape hyu-mohn can sustain a 1/10 hp output for a pretty long duration - that's about 75 watts. Peak output may reach 1/4 hp for short bursts - just short of 200W. If you've got access to a stationary bike at the gym, there's usually a display mode that'll show power in watts. 200W is a huge load."
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=224812&cid=18205098
"I see what you and the other fellow are saying. I remember that in Expo 86, there was a claptraption, where people would sit on stationary bikes, and pedal away, to light up some light bulbs. It took much effort. I'm sure that the system could have been made more efficient with flourescent lamps, and better gearing."
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=224812&cid=18209638
"Actaully the top peak wattage of sprinters is somewhere in the 1200-1600 range. But that's peak. Lance on a 1 hr TT, sustains about 400-450 watts.
And from my experience, 200W is pretty high for the average person that I know. I'm thinking 150W sustatined is probably more realistic for average weekend riders.
I think 1 hr is a better measure than 100 miles, since I don't think people will sit on an exercise bike for 5 hours.
Also I think the bike is probably going to be the most efficient transfer mechanism to generate power. Somehow I don't think you'll get the same efficiency on an elliptical or a treadmill..."
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
"But that's why I don't understand why so many of those socialist european countries are so against smoking, when they are so worried about "aging population" and creaking health services."
They aren't so much against smokers killing themselves, as they are against smokers killing others. At least that's how it is right now with bars and other public places banning it. Though that is changing with law-makers now thinking that they know what's best for you and trying to ban it everywhere.
Incorrect. Where it is true that diseases and health issues later in life will be encountered by those who survive obesity by conquering it, and thus extending their life, you neglect serveral facts:
1: medical costs for those that reach higher years in life are usually short lived, predictable and the cost is relatively minimal for most people. Heart attacks and strokes, of the most common ways to die in old age, happen suddenly, and do not have extreme costs associated with either recovery or death. Contrary to common expectations, very few folks go through open heart surgery, pacemaker implantation, or other expensive procedures like transplants. Many other diseases that kill gradually are surprisingly inexpensive to treat (as treatment is usually only in the form of pain remedy and other placating treatments). Cancer is relatively expensive to treat, but extending you life by only the 3-10 years you can gain from defeating obesity has little impact on your cancer likelyhood.
2: regardless of the age you die naturally, there is a significant cost. The addition of obesity treatments, dialysis, and other costs associated with caring for and treating the obese (custom ambulances, custom beds, extra hands to move them, etc) are IN ADDITION to these other costs of dying. It is a fallacy of logic to replace one with the other. Removing dialysis does not add cancer, or a heart attack. Fat people die from many diseases, and even if they extend their life, will likely die from them anyway. By eliminating the fat, we eliminate the extra costs.
3: If you die yough due to health issues, you paid less money into the system (insurance) and therefore even if your death costs were the same as, you are a higher burden on the system than someone who lives longer than you.
4: Skinny people are more environmentally sound: The heavier you are, the harder your car works to move your fat ass, the worse your fuel economy. Big people also tend to drive bigger cars on top of that, further adding to the issue. Also, big people tend to air condition more (issues with hot environments), watch TV more (couch potato), open the fridge more times per day (snack-aholics), etc. Big people also tend to make more small trips to stores in favor of hauling large numbers of grocery bags from fewer trips, wasting more resources in travel. For the mobidly obese, add to all this the power to run their scooter chairs, powered recliners, electric stair assists, and more.
5: big people tend to ache more, taking more pain medications. They also are much more likely to be taking blood pressure medicines, diabetic treatments, and other lifelong perscriptions. Many people who simply loose the weight get to stop taking these medicines.
I have 4 friends who were morbidly obese. 1 went from nearly 400 lbs to not much over 225. He was able to stop taking over $175 per month of perscriptions and reduced his doctor visitation cycle from nearly monthly to once yearly. He also bought a smaller car, lowered his loan payment about $200 per month, his gas bill about $100 per month, and his electric bill by about $50 per month. He also said he's lowered his grocery bills by about $200 per month once he stopped overeating. He'd been on medications since 15 years old. He's about 40 now and in better health than many 25 year olds I know. He lost the weight in 3 years time and is still loosing some of it.
Another 2 friends, a couple, have each gone from about 300lbs to under 200. They did this in 2007 by averaging over 5lbs per week weighloss. Collectively, they're saving over $600 per month in medical costs, food, and other expenses. Their insurance companies are saving about $350 of that per month.
the last is a family member on my wife's side of the family. Just by loosing 30 lbs she's been able to get off blood pressure medicine. She was formerly diabetic, but is now no longer needing to do regular blood tests nor take medication for her condition. She's nearly 50 and had been on the heart m
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
That's still a bad excuse for banning, given that it's not a "sure death" experience.
:).
;) ).
Have higher taxes on bars that allow smoking. Then there is a choice for BOTH smokers AND nonsmokers - they can go to whichever bars they want. Tweak the taxes gradually till you have an acceptable ratio.
The Gov makes more money my way. And hopefully taxes less in other areas
Banning will reduce bar revenue, and thus alcohol tax revenue. Unless you are trying to make money from fines- which is a bad idea.
I'm a nonsmoker, and I do enter bars where there are smokers (and drinkers). To me that's part of the deal. Just by entering a typical bar you increase your odds of dying - some drunk might kill you (even by accident
What next? Ban smokers from smoking when their nonsmoking friends are around?