In The Making Are Shoes That Can Charge Smartphones While Walking

A breakthrough technological discovery has been made by group of scientists in the University of Wisconsin-Madison USA, where energy harvesting device was developed and it is capable of harnessing the energy generated while walking.

A lot of energy are said to be generated when humans are walking and before now, all the energy are being converted to heat and are finally wasted.

According to the group of researchers, the energy generated while walking could produce more than 10Watts of electrical power and going by the power needed to run your smartphones and laptops, it is far lower than that.

The energy harvesting device can well be fitted into shoes to capture and store the energy generated while walking for later use (charging of smartphone).

They explained that the device is capable of doing so by using a technological method known as reverse electrowatting, where a conductive liquid interacts with a surface coated with Nano-film, and the mechanical energy generated is converted to electrical energy.

For the electrowatting process to generate enough and usable power, it will need a mechanical source that is vibrating quickly at high frequency and hence, this made them to adopt a bubbler device that consists of moving mechanical parts.