PSG Tech students innovate Walk Charger
With charger in shoes, go walk to refresh your cell & selfThe next time the cellphone battery threatens to go dead while you are on the phone, go take a walk. If you are wearing one of those special charger-enabled shoes developed by two mechanical engineering students from PSG Institute of Technology-Coimbatore, all you need is amble around for a few minutes to recharge the battery.
A brainwork of B Dinesh and S Premkumar, second-year students of the Coimbatore institute, the cellphone-charging shoe was showcased during the “Endeavour” category of IIT-Kanpur’s science and technology festival Techkriti.The contest, “Endeavour”, arguably draws the highest number of tech-enabled models in Asia and the best models are picked up by the industry for possible patenting.
Dinesh and Premkumar told Newsline that they developed the instrument to tap thousands of Kilo Pascal power that passes into the ground while one takes a walk. “We thought this power could be converted into electrical energy and then used for re-charging cellphones,” Dinesh said.
Premkumar said they used crystals of Lead Zirconium Titanate, commonly called PZT, to convert mechanical energy into electrical energy by converting the pressure of feet on the ground. “The power generated would thus be directly proportional to the person’s weight, which means higher the weight more the electrical energy produced.”
The duo said they put about 25 PZT crystals in the shoe’s soles, which could generate around 70 milli-ampere of electrical energy. “The PZT (crystals) are connected to rechargeable batteries through simple rectifiers, and the batteries lead to a charging point,” Dinesh said. They said the unit could be concealed inside the shoe soles while batteries and the charging point could be kept, hidden, in the pocket.
Dinesh said a complete unit at present costs about Rs 175, though the price would slide when the chip enters mass production domain. “The device would be of great help to the Army and para-military personnel, who move in tough, often high-altitude terrain with little or no facilities to recharge phone batteries.”
