?Nanopower? Shoes Could Generate 20W Of Electricity During Walking

4e544c8de63c0.imageThis is different from those other electric shoes that were making the rounds yesterday. Piezoelectrics are interesting, but simply don't produce a lot of power for their size. Enough to make a low-power transmitter squirt a few bytes, or light an LED. They're great for collecting ambient forces like sound and vibration, if you know the direction and type of force you want to harvest, there are better ways to go about it. In the case of harvesting energy from footsteps, you have a pretty good idea of how the forces will work. And some researchers from the University of Wisconsin Madison are working on a system that might be able to pull as much as 20W from your strut. Why are you strutting, anyway? You think you're so cool.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/gAqJjDNmk5Y/

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