Soon, you can charge your smartphone while walking

As per the new development by University of Wisconsin-Madison soon you will be able to charge your phone while walking. Walking will soon help you to charge your phone along with burning your fat.

Mechanical engineers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison develop harvesting and storage of innovative energy technology that can reduce dependence on batteries in mobile devices and charge your smartphone while you walk.

Tom Krupenkin, professor of mechanical engineering and principal investigator J Ashley Taylor describes a technology that could capture the energy of human motion to power mobile electronic devices.

This could allow an integrated energy collector shoe that captures energy produced by humans during walking and stores it for later use.

The technology could be useful for the army, as soldiers carry heavy batteries to power their radios, GPS devices and night vision goggles in the field.

“Human walking carries a lot of energy. Theoretical estimates show that it can produce up to 10 watts per shoe and that energy is just wasted as heat. A total of 20 watts from walking is not a small thing, especially compared to the power requirements of the majority of modern mobile devices,” explained Krupenkin.

A typical smartphone requires less than two watts of energy.

“We have been developing new methods of directly converting mechanical motion into electrical energy that are appropriate for this type of application,” Krupenkin noted in a paper published in the journal Scientific Reports.