21 Mar Battery-free Wearables of the Future Could Run Off Your Footsteps
All that walking you’re doing to meet your daily step-count goal could soon start paying off — and not necessarily in the way you expect.
Yes, it will it make you healthier, but it could power your activity tracker, too, thanks to an insole that sits inside your shoe and harvests energy from your footsteps.
Researchers at the University of Southampton, England, have designed the removable insole to collect the kinetic energy generated by the movement of your body and the pressure of your feet hitting the ground. This kinetic energy is then transformed into electrical energy that can be used to power small devices.