Monday, May 27, 2013: Mechanical engineering students at Rice University in Texas–Carlos Armada, Julian Castro, David Morilla and Tyler Wiest–have developed the new PediPower shoes that can turn motion into phone charge. Cameron, a company who specialises in equipment and services for the oil and gas industry, approached the students to develop new green energy technologies. While developing these technologies, the students found out that the force at the heel delivered far more potential for power than any other part of the foot.
“We went to the lab and saw the force distribution across the bottom of your foot, to see where the most force is felt,” Daily Mail quoted Morilla as saying. “We found it would be at the heel and at the balls of your toes, as you push off. We went with the heel because, unless you’re sprinting, you’re letting gravity do the work.”
It is said that the currently designed devices are too big for day-to-day wear, but the prototypes developed at Rice’s Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen could meet the benchmarks set by Cameron.
According to the report, “The prototypes deliver an average of 400 milliwatts, enough to charge a battery, in benchtop tests. However the device produces a little less in walking tests, where the moving parts don’t move as far.”
“The shoes send energy through wires to a belt-mounted battery pack. A voltage regulator keeps energy flowing steadily to the battery The PediPower technology hits the ground before any other part of the prototype shoe. A lever arm strikes first. It is attached to a gearbox that replaces much of the shoe’s sole and turns the gears a little with each step. The gears drive a motor mounted on the outside of the shoe that generates electricity to send up to the battery,” the report further added.
Another team of students at Rice University is likely to pick up the project in Autumn to turn the shoe into a commercial product. They will be working towards shrinking the size and boosting the power output of PediPower shoes.
