A floor That converts your footsteps to NRG?

User45701

http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/2007/07/27/smart_floors_co.html

Interesting, aparently it will be like walking on sand and might be a bit weird to walk on but the idea is sound, and the idea of a whole city made of that material is interesting

Kintarō Hattori

Interesting stuff indeed. I hope the benefits far outweigh any negative aspects it might have. The US Army are working on a way of harnessing the power of their soldiers footsteps to power equipment, something along the same line as above. Cool technology.

AlmightyCushion

It sounds cool but pointless steorn is going to provide us with all our energy needs.

BKtje

So could that work on the bottom of peoples shoes(as in attached to shoe rather than on floor) to power i-pods (or at least charge them somewhat) or a light or whatever?

Kinda like charge the battery while you walk around at work then dump the energy into your house when you get home. I realise it would probably cost a fortune atm and therefore not really wortwhile it till technology becomes cheaper and more effecient but is this what may happen in the future?

Pretty cool either way.

AlmightyCushion

B-K-DzR wrote:

So could that work on the bottom of peoples shoes(as in attached to shoe rather than on floor) to power i-pods (or at least charge them somewhat) or a light or whatever?

Kinda like charge the battery while you walk around at work then dump the energy into your house when you get home. I realise it would probably cost a fortune atm and therefore not really wortwhile it till technology becomes cheaper and more effecient but is this what may happen in the future?

Pretty cool either way.

You'd need to be carrying around some big ass battery if you plan on dumping it in to your house but for charging things like a phone or mp3 player while on the go that would be cool. How many times have you left the house when your phone/mp3 player battery is nearly dead?

User45701

Actually you can buy a UBS device that mounts on your chest. your heart beat actually causes the device to generate power which is channeled though a USB straight into your i-pod or any other device

cooperguy

The cost of installing it is probably eleventy billion dollars a square foot

AlmightyCushion

User45701 wrote:

Actually you can buy a UBS device that mounts on your chest. your heart beat actually causes the device to generate power which is channeled though a USB straight into your i-pod or any other device

Cool. Any more info. How much energy does it produce?

mawk

AlmightyCushion wrote:

Cool. Any more info. How much energy does it produce?

well ipods only charge off usb2 and so its gotta push at least 5v. i bulilt a shuffle charger a while ago and it took 5V .5A so this heartbeat charger probably, at peak power, generates about 3W. so between 20 of us we could have a nice free lighbulb.

freeee.....

also should this not be in the engineering or physics forum?

User45701

AlmightyCushion wrote:

Cool. Any more info. How much energy does it produce?

http://blog.scifi.com/tech/archives/2007/05/16/breath_powered.html

its actually breath powered, my mistake