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Agitation Squad

Agitation Powered Motor Harvesting Green Energy

 

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Membership level
2012-2013 Team
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Team Name
Agitation Squad
Project Title
Agitation Powered Motor Harvesting Green Energy
Design Challenge
The human body is constantly in motion. Throughout the day, humans expend energy running errands, walking, working out, etc. Our technology will harvest energy from human activity. Currently very few solutions exist, and those that do, fail to operate in diverse scenarios and are not ergonomic. Power production over 1 watt has been set as the primary goal for our device. This amount of power would be sufficient to operate various electrical devices including medical electronics. An ergonomic device that can continuously provide renewable energy will revolutionize the use of portable electronics.
Design Summary
PediPower is a transplantable unit that can be installed into most common walking shoes. It uses a lever arm that – upon heel strike of a walk – pivots at the mid foot and reaches to the heel to rotate a drive gear. A gearbox located in the rear half of the outsole converts the low speed/high torque rotation into low torque/high speed rotation. The output shaft from the gearbox then drives a generator that is mounted in a housing directly below the ankle bone on the outside of the shoe. Electrical current generated flows through wires up each leg to a regulation and storage system mounted on the hip. The shoe device can be locked in the compressed position for operation as a normal shoe and the charging wires can be easily detached when the shoes are removed.
The final device was able to generate 200mW of usable power to charge a battery pack that can be used to power small mobile electronics. Furthermore, metabolic testing concluded that the device did not cause a significant increase in oxygen consumption on the user.
Sponsors
Cameron
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Department(s)
  • Mechanical Engineering
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Faculty Advisor 1 - Name
Dr. McStravick

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Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen
Rice University

6100 Main Street MS 390 | Houston, Texas | 77005

Phone: 713.348.OEDK

Email: oedk@rice.edu

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