Power Your Smartphone by Walking

Tom Krupenkin and J. Ashley Taylor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are designing a shoe that will hold a charging device to power your electronic devices. The pair of researchers believe the charger will generate 20 kilowatts of electrical power—enough to be practical in charging your Smartphone or iPod by just walking down the street.

“What has been lacking is a mechanical-to-electrical energy conversion technology that would work well for this type of application [mobile electronic devices],” said Krupenkin.

Energy-harvesting technology for charging electronic devices isn’t new. In 2008 an Idaho-based startup company, M2E Power developed a cell phone charger that could convert six hours of everyday movement into one hour of talk time. So why haven’t we heard about this device? Apparently the company was bought in 2009 by Motionetics, another Idaho-based company. When I went to the Motionetics website, very little information was available. According to an article by Katie Fehrenbacher, Gigaom, “an explanation on its web site that it “designs and builds next generation energy devices.” According to VatorNews, which spoke with Motionetics Co-founder Layne Simmons, Motionetics is based in Idaho and will be working on military and consumer applications with M2E Power’s assets.” My guess is that Motionetics is a government funded research lab.

Another researcher, Ville Kaajakari, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Louisiana Tech University, was developing vibratory MEMS generators in 2009. This technology is based on a low-cost polymer transducer that has metalized surfaces for electrical contact. The piezoelectric power generation efficiently converts the piezoelectric charge into a usable voltage. Kaajakari’s device also used a walking shoe to create the electricity.

The newest device is soon to be marketed by Krupenkin and Taylor’s company, Instep Nanopower. According to Jeff Hughes, Digital Trends, “The Wisconsin-Madison Researchers believe that by inserting their device into a pair of shoes, a person could generate up to 20 watts of electrical energy. That energy could then be used to charge devices by plugging in to a small USB port into the shoes. Another method would be to create a tiny Wi-Fi hotspot in the shoe device which would take the load off a phone’s battery. Krupenkin says that this could extend battery life to a month rather than just a day or two.”

This device could change the world. It could be a major breakthrough for 3rd World countries where whole villages line up at “charging stations” to charge up their cell phones. With all the natural disasters, this device could also be life saving. In the meantime, you should probably get a Spare Battery and maybe a Spare Cell Phone Battery Charger.

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