As we’re sure you know, there are tons of different ways to generate electricity, be it chemical, solar, piezoelectric, etc. That last one refers to a current that’s generated through a compressive force on a particular type of material: compress the material and electricity is generated, though usually these currents are very small, in the order of miliwatts. In other words, it’s not a very effective method of harvesting electricity. But now researchers at the University of Wisconsin Madison seem to have developed a method which could generate a lot more current: about 20 watts! They are doing this by using a liquid metal (Galinstan in a process they called “reverse electrowetting.” They place some of this metal at the heel and sole of the shoe and as you walk, the liquid is pumped back and forth, generating a strong current. This is then stored in a battery in the sole of the show.
How you later access this energy is still being determined. You could of course plug a USB directly into the shoe, but that’s not very elegant. That decision will come in the future as they are planning on having a prototype ready in two years and commercialization perhaps sometime after that.
Bikes designed for off-road trail riding feature thick tires and robust suspension systems to cushion the rider from all the bumps and vibrations they encounter. But road bikes, which are designed to be low-profile and light, are lacking such amenities. And unless you exclusively ride on a perfectly smooth track in a velodrome, you’re still going to encounter pot holes and other bumps on a road. The traditional bike design we all know and love features a triangular rear frame, which unfortunately is quite effective at transferring vibrations and bumps from the road to the rider. Which can lead to fatigue and soreness. So inventor Lou Tortola (who hails from my hometown) started to rethink the traditional road bike design.
What he came up with was a pretty simple, but radical improvement on their design. Instead of keeping the bike’s overall diamond geometry, he replaced the rear part of the frame with a set of circular rings. It changes nearly nothing about how the bike goes together or how it operates, but has a dramatic effect on how it rides. With the RoundTail frame, vibrations and shocks from the road are transferred to the two metal circles, where the energy follows along their circumference until dissipated. Instead of traveling up to the rider. In tests, the RoundTail frame has been found to absorb 60 times more vibrations from the road than a standard frame, allowing riders to spend more time riding before they start feeling any discomfort.
Adding an electric or even gas powered motor to your bicycle can help extend its range and make it a truly viable alternative to a car for commuting. But it’s not always an easy, or cheap, conversion. Mechanical Engineering student (and coolest name of the day winner) Maxwell von Stein might have come up with a reasonably simple alternative. His Flywheel Bicycle features a – you guessed it – built-in flywheel that harnesses the bike’s energy that’s usually lost when braking. When coming to a stop the kinetic energy is instead transferred to the 15 pound flywheel as it spins up. Then, at some point while riding, the energy in the flywheel can be transferred back to the bike’s rear wheel giving the rider an extra kick or boost.
Maxwell’s goal is to see flywheel technology adopted into cars, but hopefully something will come of his bicycle design as it’s a relatively uncomplicated way to add the benefits of regenerative braking to a pedal-powered bike.
Now don’t get me wrong, I understand how important energy efficient lighting can be. But at the same time I find it difficult to get that excited over new innovations or related products. So kudos to Sharp for not only creating what they claim to be the world’s most energy efficient ceiling light, but also kind of making me want one. Their ELM or ‘Eco Lighting Management’ lights use the same type of highly efficient LEDs used in LCD TVs, along with direct illumination techniques which allows for a “luminous efficiency of 81.3 lumens per watt” making it the world’s most energy efficient… for the time being.
But that’s not what really interests me about these lights. What I like is that you can adjust the brightness and color tone using an included wireless remote, with a total of 103 variations between the two for creating the perfect ambiance. They can also be dimmed to serve as a subtle nightlight in a room, and even have sleep timer options via the remote which will gradually fade the light off as you fall asleep. The lights will be available as soon as August 27 in 3 different sizes. Ranging in price from ~$460 (¥35,000) for the smallest model, to ~$720 (¥55,000) for the largest.
I’m not sure if referring to your company’s new display technology as ‘magic’ is the best approach. It makes me envision Sony’s R&D department as a bunch of wizards in the basement of a castle, flailing their wands about, trying to conjure up new gear and technologies. But that’s exactly what the company has done with their new ‘WhiteMagic’ LCD display technology which in essence adds a white pixel to the standard red, blue and green mix. Resulting in a new RGBW TFT LCD display.
In the past, adding another neutral pixel to this mix would result in image quality being degraded. But the real innovation here is a new signal processing algorithm, developed by the company, which analyzes the image data and makes suitable adjustments to remedy the problem. What you’re left with is a 3-inch VGA res display which reduces the power consumption of the backlight by 50%, while keeping it as visibly bright as a standard RGB LCD. It also facilitates a display that’s twice as bright as today’s LCDs, while using the same amount of power, making them easier to see outdoors in bright sunlight.
If you’ve ever been driven completely mad by the sound of one of your PC’s cooling fans (anyone? no? it’s just me then?) you’ll certainly appreciate the improvements a Swedish company called RotoSub has made to them. While it can’t eliminate the sound of the air rushing through the blades, their R-ANC (Active Noise Control) technology effectively deals with sounds generated by the fan’s mechanical moving parts, which typically are the annoying culprit.
Normally, noise cancelling technologies use a microphone and a separate speaker to generate sound waves that are out-of-phase with the sound being eliminated. And as the two signals combine, they effectively cancel each other out. From what I can tell the R-ANC technology works in a similar fashion, except that instead of a speaker, the noise-cancelling out-of-phase signals are generated by the blades themselves as their ‘angle of attack’ is modulated ever so slightly. The company’s website doesn’t do a great job at explaining how the technology works, but the demonstration in this video below certainly shows it’s effective.
And in case you were wondering, that whole plastic tube setup in the product shot above is just part of their demo system that makes it easier to hear the noises being cancelled. The R-ANC equipped fans will be no different than the fans currently used in desktop computers and other electronics, save for using a touch more electricity in the process.
A few years ago, at CES2010, we discovered a concept device that RCA was showing off that promised to harvest electricity from wi-fi signals, which could then be used to charge mobile devices. The ‘Airnergy’ charger, as they called it, sparked a lot of discussion about whether or not such a technology was even possible. And sure enough, at CES 2011, the Airnergy devices were no where to be seen at RCA’s booth. We assumed that would be the last we’d hear about the concept, but a Japanese company called Nihon Dengyo Kosaku has apparently picked up the torch.
Their unfortunately named ‘Rectenna’, which is actually a combination of the words ‘rectifying’ and ‘antenna’, is able to convert terrestrial TV broadcast signals, or wi-fi, back into usable electricity. At a recent trade show in Tokyo, where the company was showing off the technology, they were able to harvest about 1.2mV and 0.06µW of power from a TV broadcast antenna located about 3.4 miles away. Not a heck of a lot of juice of course, but there are electronics that can run on just micro-watts of power. So while it won’t be useful for charging your smartphone, it does seem to be a viable way to wirelessly power certain barebones devices.
If you’ve ever spent an afternoon trying to camouflage the holes left from pins and thumbtacks before moving out of a dorm room or apartment, you’ll appreciate the simple innovation these Ninjapins bring. Traditional tacks feature a round shaft with a pointed tip that makes them easy to stick in a wall, but when removed they leave behind a tiny, but very noticeable, hole. So to combat that problem the ninjapins feature a shaft that’s actually just a thin, folded metal strip. It stays just as rigid as a round shaft, and sticks into a wall just as easily thanks to an angled, sharpened tip.
But when removed, instead of a hole, you’re left with a very thin ‘L’ shaped slit in the wall that’s far less noticeable from a distance. I mean, if your landlord is going over your place with a fine-toothed-comb they’re probably going to see them, but for most uses they seem like a far better alternative to regular tacks if you’re trying to keep your wall damage to a minimum. The only catch? A 5-piece set from AssistOn runs about $5 (¥400), so in the long run it may just be cheaper to refinish a perforated wall.
According to Japan Trends, the country currently has the highest number of vending machines per capita in the entire world. About one for every 23 citizens. So the Japanese Red Cross has teamed up with Coca-Cola to create a special vending machine that makes it very easy to donate towards the disaster relief efforts still underway there.
In addition to purchasing a beverage, there are two extra option buttons allowing users to donate either ¥10 or ¥100 (very small amounts) as part of their purchase. The machines are branded with the organization’s iconic red cross so they stand out among the sea of other vending machines, and until September 100% of the donations will go directly towards the earthquake relief efforts there. After that, all the donations will still go to the Japanese Red Cross, but will be used for other purposes as well.
Related Tags: electricity, footwear, Innovation
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