The Lee Ufan exhibit continues at the Guggenheim Museum until the end of the month.
(MUSIC)
MARIO RITTER: Scientists in the United States are working on a technology that uses human energy to power devices like cell phones, laptop computers, and GPS systems. Tom Krupenkin teaches electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin. He and his team want to reduce dependence on costly and polluting batteries. Instead of using batteries for power, they have turned to human beings.
TOM KRUPENKIN: “We humans are actually very powerful machines.”
MARIO RITTER: Professor Krupenkin and his team have placed a device in a shoe that collects and stores energy from human motion and turns it into electricity. One part of this device is an energy harvester. It has two small containers filled with thousands of very small drops of liquid. These droplets get pushed back and forth as a person walks.
Artist's idea of a shoe embedded with components that collect and store power to run mobile devices.
TOM KRUPENKIN: “So it is essentially a flow of a fluid through flexible plastic tubes with embedded electrodes which are covered by a special material that we invented. These actually directly convert it into electric power. Now, the output of this energy is stored in a regular rechargeable tiny battery of the style that we have in cell phones.”
FAITH LAPIDUS: The team has also developed a system to permit use of the stored energy by common mobile devices. It does not require connections with wires, and can be used to create a wireless signal. A cell phone that uses the wireless “hotspot” from the shoe would use much less power than if connected to a wireless telephone network.
最新
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25