Knee Device Generates Electricity While You Walk
A knee mounted generator has been invented by a team of researchers at the Simon Fraser University.
This could tap into a cheap & clean energy, you.
It’s called the Biomechanical Energy Harvester and it fits around each knee. As the wearer naturally walks around the device generates electricity.
At normal walking speed, and with little extra physical effort, the device can generate about five watts of constant electricity. Meaning a single minute of walking could power a cellphone for 10 minutes or an MP3 player for 40, said Max Donelan, a researcher who worked on the Biomechanical Energy Harvester.
This is not the first device to try to capture electricity from normal human movement. What makes it different is it does so without requiring the user to exert much extra effort.
The researchers tested the knee brace on six men walking on a treadmill at 1.5 meters per second. One group had the generator activated at a number of settings while another acted as a control group. In the group where the brace was only activated while the knee was braking, the subjects required less than one watt of extra metabolic power to produce one watt of energy.
The current version of the knee brace is just a proof-of-concept, there are plans to make the device less bulky while still retaining its energy harvesting capabilities.
It’s currently unknown how much the device may cost, but the first versions will likely run in the thousands.
For that reason, the device will likely be most attractive as a way of powering expensive prosthetic limbs or for use by the military. Once the price comes down the general public will most likely see this in the open market.
Links: Newscientist.com
User
Very interesting, but really it’s not going to be massively accepted until its much smaller. It screams Military & Industrial applications to me.