Power-generating device could be embedded in footwear

In a paper appearing today in the journal Nature Communications, Tom Krupenkin and J Ashley Taylor describe a new energy-harvesting technology that captures the energy of human motion to power portable electronics.

‘Humans, generally speaking, are very powerful energy-producing machines,’ said Krupenkin, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of mechanical engineering. ‘While sprinting, a person can produce as much as a kilowatt of power.’

Exploiting a small fraction of that energy, Krupenkin said, is enough to power a host of mobile electronic devices, including laptop computers, cell phones and flashlights.

‘What has been lacking is a mechanical-to-electrical energy conversion technology that would work well for this type of application,’ he said.

According to the university, current energy-harvesting technologies are aimed at either high-power applications, such as wind or solar power, or very low-power applications, such as calculators, watches or sensors. ‘What’s been missing is the power in the watts range,’ said Taylor, an engineering researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. ‘That’s the power range needed for portable electronics.’