“Power” Walk and Charge Your Cell Phone
The University of Michigan has come up with a novel idea. Apparently they had asked themselves “Why can’t we power our own cell-phones and other devices?” Playing with the regenerative braking systems that are in some Hybrid vehicles they came up with a knee brace that captures the kinetic energy released as we walk.
This could be a huge step forward to those of us with prosthetics allowing them to generate power for various bio-medical devices. Those of us that like to go hiking and camping (me me) it would come in very handy to have a device that could charge a flashlight, GPS, or emergency radio. There always comes a moment when camping that you could use a little extra power, at least there always is with me.
They’ll need to tweak the design some as the current prototype is around 3 and a half pounds. I think it’s a pretty good idea, what about you? Think of all the power a mail-carrier would generate. They would just need to add some type of battery for storage and voila. Maybe I’m too much of a geek lol. What about you? Could this benefit you?
Written by:
Ken