Eco Factor: Battery designed to harvest noise and vibrations to power small electronic devices.
Harnessing solar and wind energy is not a new concept, and we’ve already seen plenty of gadget chargers that promise to reduce your carbon footprint using renewable energy. Researchers at the University of Michigan are trying to harvest something entirely different and unconventional – noise.
The team of researchers is putting together a variety of battery that gets its power from irregular, low-frequency vibrations including the ones caused by a person walking up stairs, vibrations of a moving car or even street noise. Since the generator is not fixed to generate electricity at a specific frequency, the device will be able to harvest power from a variety of sources.
The researchers aren’t planning to power your house with such vibration and noise-harvesting batteries anytime soon, but they propose to generate enough power (about half a milliwatt) that can power small devices such as watches and pacemakers.
Via: CrunchGear
