14 DAY TRIAL // A new technology that could help people power MP3 players and other electronic devices through movement transformed into energy by their clothes or the carpets they walk on is being developed by scientists at the University of Southampton.
This research will begin in October to be finished by 2015, and it should discover new materials and processes for the development of energy fabrics suitable for several applications.
Dr Steve Beeby and his team at the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) have been awarded a prestigious Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Leadership Fellowship to realize this research, with necessary funding provided up to five years.
This award is like an investment in talented British researchers and its goal is to one day use the energy to power up wireless health monitoring systems, or simply MP3 players or other consumer products, and even in the motor vehicles sector.
The idea behind this project is generating power only by people's movements, thus eliminating the need to change batteries on machines, Alpha Galileo reports.
Researchers thought of using rapid printing processes and active printed inks to create an energy harvesting film in textiles, and as this film will also be printed on carpets, people will generate energy by simply walking around the house or the office.
Dr Beeby sais that “this project looks at generating electrical power from the way people move and then applying an energy harvesting film to the clothes they wear or the materials they have around them.
“We will generate useful levels of power which will be harvested through the films in the textiles, [but] the two big challenges in smart textiles are supplying power and surviving washing.”
The new sensor technology that will make the energy producing process a reality is being developed by Dr Beeby and his team with the aid of the Microflex project, a Framework 7 European Union funded project that should be finished by November 2012.