Hasta La Gadget!

One thing everybody does is walk. You could drive a car or ride the bus to work or to school, but you’d still have to walk to do various stuff throughout your day. Now a group of students called the ‘Agitation Squad’ from Rice University are taking that very basic action and coming up with ways to use that kinetic energy, starting with the PediPower.

The PediPower is a prototype device that’s meant to be attached to the heel of your shoes. Energy is generated every time the heel hits the ground (or with every step that you take), and the PediPower harvests this as you go along. The device has an arm attached to the heel of the shoe which hits the ground first and moves up as the person puts his or her weight on the foot. The arm, in turn, is attached to a gearbox, where gears turn with every step to drive a motor that has been mounted on the side of the shoe.

This movement generates electricity, which is transported via a voltage regulator and through wires to a belt-mounted battery pack.

The initiative was a response to a challenge from Houston-based company Cameron International, which called for the creation of a device that could harvest energy from human activity.

The Agitation Squad gives an overview of the PediPower in the clip above. Check it out to see how putting your foot down will one day generate energy to maybe even power up your gadgets!

[via Gizmag]

Whether you like it or not, electric cars are part of our future, and I hope that my next one will be able to function without the need of any gas. Distance races are quite important, because they allow teams to showcase and iron out the faults in rapidly-developing electric vehicle technologies.

The tiny two-seat Evonik Wind Explorer electric car has traveled across Australia, which covers about 3,100 miles from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Coast. Incredibly, the trip used less than $15 in electricity. The EV was run by rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, which are capable of being juiced up by a mobile wind turbine, producing enough energy to travel 174 to 224 miles a day.

The Evonik car was constructed out of lightweight carbon fiber, and has a kite that gives it an added boost in the wind – but wouldn’t be very practical in the city.

I wonder when I’ll be able to use this kind of vehicle to travel around daily.

[via Wired via designboom]

I think it’s definitely a good idea to try to replace some of the world’s nuclear power plants with clean and sustainable sources of energy. After the disaster at the Fukishima power plant, Japan has unveiled a plan to decrease its reliance on nuclear energy and move towards greater use of wind power.

To help with this transition, the Japanese Agency for Natural Resources and Energy plans to build the world’s largest offshore wind farm by 2020. It will be located near the current site of the now-defunct Fukushima nuclear power plant. The wind farm will have 143 wind turbines on floating platforms anchored to the sea floor. Once fully operational, the wind farm could generate up to a gigawatt of power.

This latest project is part of Japan’s initiative to become completely energy self-sufficient by 2040.

[via New Scientist]

As gadgets become more and more compact and portable, one thing that continues to stand in the way is the limitation of current battery technology. Just think of how the majority of space and weight inside your tablet or smartphone is its battery pack, and they still often run out of juice before you’re done for the day. As companies continue to work on improving battery life, and decreasing consumption, it would be nice to be able to generate more power when you need it. One conceptual device hopes to help a little bit, by harnessing the energy you expend when you walk or run.

While industrial designer Toby Blake’s Kinetic Charger concept isn’t the first such gadget, it’s definitely one of the more stylish and compact attempts to create a kinetic-energy storage device. The small USB charger would simply clip onto your beltline or a pocket, and would harvest energy you expend as you move around throughout the day, using reverse electrowetting technology.

Blake envisions that each one could store up to 4 watts of power, and you could connect multiples together to increase available energy levels.

Now there are probably some practical challenges that would limit the effectiveness of such as small kinetic-capture device, and there’s really not much room inside of it for a supplemental battery pack to store that energy in either. Still, it’s a cool design, and I’d love to see it come to market someday.

[via EcoChunk]