Electricity Producing Kneebrace
Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 |
| Credit: Greg Ehlers/Simon Fraser University. |
Talk about getting value added from your knee brace. This knee brace captures kinetic energy generated by the braking action of your knee.
Researchers report that the energy-capturing knee brace can generate enough electricity from walking to operate a portable GPS locator, a cell phone, a motorized prosthetic joint or an implanted neurotransmitter
The biomechanical energy harvester includes an aluminum chassis and generator mounted on a customized orthopaedic knee brace. The device weighs 3.5 lbs and is worn in similar fashion to most any other knee brace.
From the researchers:
“In the mode in which the brace is only activated while the knee is braking, the subjects required less than one watt of extra metabolic power for each watt of electricity they generated. A typical hand-crank generator, for comparison, takes an average of 6.4 watts of metabolic power to generate one watt of electricity because of inefficiencies of muscles and generators.”
Very cool! If marketed at the right price this trick may be worth buying and wearing even if you don’t have a trick knee. It seems to be able to power almost one of everything that I normally haul around with me.
You can read more at the University of Michigan site:
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6325