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Theoretical Shoe Inserts Could Power Your Gadgets
In his first accepted submission, Anon8---) writes "As published on nature.com, a process called electrowetting, 'in which a conductive liquid droplet, placed on an electrode, is physically deformed by an applied electric charge,' could be used to provide 10 watts of juice to smartphones and other gadgets as you walk. 'The technique depends on the use of a dielectric material — which is usually an insulator but that can be polarized in an electric field — to coat the electrode. When the dielectric is charged the droplet can wet the surface more easily, and deforms. In his system, Krupenkin runs this process backwards, using the changing physical form of liquid drops between dielectric-coated plates to generate charge and therefore electrical power.' So far, Krupenkin and Ashley Taylor have been able to produce a few milliwatts of power along tiny channels a few millimeters wide. They have patented the idea and are now concentrating on scaling up the device and designing a shoe to contain it."
Lots of potential, although I think the idea has no legs. Please let me know if you disagree and your reasons for doing so.
For obvious reasons.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
A theoretical shoe insert won't power anything.
Do you have any better hostages?
...chargin'
one of these days these boots are gonna charge your gadgets too.
What's the cheapest food source in $/calorie, and how does it compare with the cost in $/kWh from the electrical grid?
Could they maybe put this in my chair? I don't think putting it in my shoes would do very much good.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I can see this being used to get kids off their asses and at least moving around some.
Confiscate your child's phone charger, and make it so this is the only way they can charge said phone.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
He hopes a device like this could be useful in developing countries, where electricity isn't always as plentiful or accessible as it is in more industrialized parts of the world.
Anonymous Coward wrote:
I think the idea has no legs.
Incidentally, a lot of people in developing countries where landmines were used also have no legs. I wonder whether this could be useful for incorporation into crutches or walking gloves.
Warning: Blatantly stereotyped joke ahead. The easily offended should stop reading now.
Okay, the rest of you: This is America! Forget shoes, we need to attach these things to forks!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
They have patented the idea and are now concentrating on scaling up the device and designing a shoe to contain it
Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (plus some of his older books as well) helped kill a patent for waterbeds IIRC. Perhaps Frank Herbert's Dune can be used to help kill this patent. Fremen stillsuit boots generated power from walking.
Can't we just get a wireless charging standard for mobile devices? Ubiquitous charging stations located everywhere from Starbucks to the waiting room at the doctor's office to your friend's house will provide enough opportunity to charge a heavily used device.
Ssssh....I'm working on a beanie hat to harness portable wind power for charging my phone. Please forward all VC checks to anonymouscoward@slashdot.org
Hook this up to a robot and use the generated power to power the robot. Name the robot Perpetua.
or free energy. Why do people keep looking for ways to power stuff by (inefficiently) robbing it from other places? The last two posted here were shirts that flexed to power gadgets, and roads that had bumps in them to run road lighting.
However you do this, (1) you're going to make something else require more energy, and (2) introducing additional energy loss due to conversion. In this case, if you put some material in the soles to gather mechanical energy it's just going to make your feet a little more tired.
I see something of a relation between this and sales tax... sales taxes are applied to when you're already spending money and it just shaves a little off that doesn't look like it mattered too much. Same thing here, just making your commute a little more tiring with the idea that you won't really notice. Shoe power doesn't create energy any more than sales taxes create money.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
To test his idea, Krupenkin placed patches of electrodes coated very thinly with the dielectric tantalum oxide along tiny channels a few millimetres wide. Using a resistor to convert electrical charge to alternating current, Krupenkin was able to harvest electrical energy from drops of either mercury or galinstan, a gallium-based alloy as they were moved along these channels and over the electrodes.
Ummm. A resistor? What?
Remember those children's sneakers from the 90's that would flash LED's as the wearer walked?
/* No Comment */
There's a reason we walk on rubber soles instead of wooden. A rubber sole deforms, and stores energy in the rubber. A bit later it releases that energy again, and pushes your foot back up.
That is energy efficient, and also the reason why the Achilles tendons are so important for running. They too deform end store/release energy.
So what happens when you tap into this energy? Well, then the rubber would no longer make your foot bounce back. So you'd have to put more effort in your leg muscles to move your foot back up and forward. I imagine it would feel like walking on sand: easy to step into, but more effort to step out of.
You gellin'?
Yeah man, I'm gellin'.
In all seriousness, this might be exactly what we need to do that PAN thing people are always going on about. (Technically we already have this with NFC and tethering, but ... PAN, man!)
poor some money into this.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Amazing! This must be the first time that raw theoretical power has been harnessed to do something! If this works we should finally be able to get something useful out of all those academics.
No we can all act like Thor with our lightning drop kicks!
solar has been around for ages and could power stuff... people just don't bother when grid power is so cheap, and not worth the hassle & expense of other devices.
Oftentimes, the energy we "steal" from someplace else would have gone to waste anyway. Perhaps the energy here is normally dissipated as heat? If so, reclaiming it won't make you any more tired, and may even make you more comfortable.
I wear actual shoes.
I would love to have my theoretical gadgets powered with theoretical electricity from these theoretical shoe inserts.
Sorry, I thought the above was responding to my original post. Slashdot somehow managed to list it as such. First time I ever noticed such a bug.
Yes I am aware of tablets used in 2001.
I walk 3.2 miles round trip every day for my commute... Maybe I could plug my shoes in at the end of the day and sell that back to the electric company?
Sarcasm is the recourse of a weak mind...
--
> Theoretical Shoe Inserts Could Power Your Gadgets
Wow, who said things work only in theory but not in practice?
I'll pass on this technology for shoes. I'd either have to strap my phone to my shoes, or run cables in my clothes. Either method doesn't impress me.
Two Rules For Success:
1) Never tell people everything you know.
power armor shouldn't be too far behind!
And what happens when you get your feet wet?
You don't patent fucking idea. You patent inventions. You patents processes.
YOU DO NOT PATENT IDEAS
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Making it a shoe binds you to just one pair. With insoles, you can use them all the time.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
...stillsuits really should be open hardware.
How much will these cost?
Can they cope with getting wet? Of course ahoes get damp and sweaty anyway, but in the case of a rainstorm and deeper than you think puddles they can get soaked.
For me, walking is not just a means of exercise , it is a means of transport - I don't own a car you insensitive clod.
in a country where obesity stands at more than 30% of the population and overweight citizens comprise 70% of the population,
you'd be crazy to think this "energy source" was capable of generating 3 watts of electricity, let alone 10.
Sell it to india, most americans cant eat lunch without breaking a sweat.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Uh oh...this sounded like a good idea at first. But this guy went out and got a patent on it. Obviously patents are just a way to restrict technology. We should pressure this guy to give away his idea for free.
Electro-wetting... is that like code for peeing in your pants? I swear some day I'll read the article :p
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Crystals already give mW of power when deformed. It's used to weigh your fat ass on a digital scale.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
footheld?
Wiki mentions mercury in the history section.... Goes on to say any hydrophobic liquid conductor. Not a lot of those I don't think.
Does anyone know what liquids work best for this application?
The world produces a lot of excess mercury and it would be cool to see a new application for it -- despite any health issue associated with the substance.
Just saying.
Ever heard of regenerative breaking? "Free" energy. You need to brake so you might as well store the energy instead of trying desperately to vent it as heat.
Shoes are much the same. Most shoes have a suspension mechanism. When your foot lands it is compressed, movement is turned into heat. If you turn the movement into something else, the energy would be still be dissipated but this time into something more useful.
It isn't free energy strictly speaking, it is just using energy that you would otherwise waste.
Of course, the shoes might also work like a generator in which case they use some energy but hey, most people can afford to spend a little bit more. Or are you that afraid of excersise? Oh wait, this is slashdot. We are!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Just put these inserts between fault lines
In soviet Russia, God creates you!
a microsecond? Generally batteries and the electronics that keep them from turning into bombs do not like pulses of unregulated current.
SO where are you going to hide the capacitors and regulator?
The summary clearly states that the power is generated by theoretical shoe inserts. Therefore one only need to walk in theory to generate power.
Wouldn't it be possible to incorporate this technology into car tires? most car tire sidewalls deform constantly as the tire rotates. If it could scale up far enough it could give a small boost to an electric/hybrid car's mileage.
Would also power my devices. But that's fucking dumb. This is another over-engineered and dumb idea.
I've been looking around for nifty inserts for my theoretical shoes.
One approach to energy harvesting is to increase the efficiency of human walking and capture the energy the human would have expended walking. This has actually been demonstrated with an energy harvesting backpack. The amount of power the human should consume carrying the backpack and doing work on the generator was found to be more than the amount of power the human actually consumes.
So in other words, you still have to pay for your lunch, but you get more for your money.
see "Harvesting Energy by Improving the Economy of Human Walking," for more
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/309/5741/1686.short
Will promptly have you back scattered, strip searched, anal probed and put on the Terrorist Watch List if they catch you with these.
Going back to the RC Heli forum. Bye.
"Theoretical Shoe Inserts Could Power Your Gadgets"
I suspect that a theoretical doughnut could only satisfy theoretical hunger.
Wonder what wonders are available if they were Hypothetical rather than Theoretical?
Nate
I wouldn't need an actual shoe insert, only a theoretical one? That's awesome!
Shoes are usually designed to bounce back using the energy you put into the sole while treading down.
Would these shoes feel like they sucked you to the ground as they used up that energy?
theoretical ponies that can crap lightning and power a city.
and I can power up my laptop (90 watts). But I hate walking and typing.
Imagine the TSA's reaction when you've got electronics AND liquids in the sole of your shoe!
I fail to see how a theoretical anything could power something of mine. Don't you need an actual physical something to charge anything? Or is it the other way around, where you need a physical anything to charge something? Oh, I get so confused. But I'm pretty sure that theoretical won't cut it and you'll need physicality there somewhere.
That is all.
I first read this as "Theoretical Shoe Insects". Them bugs must be hard at work...
Once again this type of silly invention pops up. No normal person would use it, except for a work out. we're talking of robbing 30% or so of the energy a human uses to walk. A person in peak athletic shape can make 75W for a length of time, that's 1/10 of a horsepower. The rest of us would get quickly tired. That's why these "walk to generate" electricity devices mostly go nowhere since the 60s (and maybe someone older can tell me if they saw them in 50s or 40s)
as an engineer, you should no better then to not RTFA:
"up to 10 watts of power is lost as heat each time a foot hits the ground. Mobile devices such as phones and laptops use between 1 and 15 watts, so harnessing our 'foot power' would make a notable difference for consumers."
I added the bold.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Danger is my middle name! I hope they invent the Cone of Silence next. Always wanted one of those.
In ye olde days, you had to have a working prototype to patent something. These numb nuts just patented something they haven't even figured out how to do yet, and now they're selling snake oil vapors to get funding for R&D.
"So far, Krupenkin and Ashley Taylor have been able to produce a few milliwatts of power along tiny channels a few millimeters wide. They have patented the idea and are now concentrating on scaling up the device and designing a shoe to contain it."
I assume it would have springs, or more rubber, to compensate. Which would slightly increase a) the weight of the shoe, and b) the carbon "footprint" of making the shoe. It's the latter (b) that troubles me, and the latter that media/journalists often ignore. The amount of energy required to mine, refine, melt and mold a battery (like in a Prius) can be more than the battery holds or saves in its useful lifetime. Shoes wear out, and if these become like disposable tablets (whose batteries cannot be replaced), then it will be a net loss for society/carbon/energy. Visit the OK Tedi Mine in Papua New Guinea on Google Earth to see where all the shiny copper we are using comes from (hint: rainforest with runoff of mine tailings into coral reefs).
Gently reply