Your knee can charge your Mobile Phone!

Let us talk about generating power for our mobile phones. It is really hard to remember the chargers if you have lot of stylish ones around! May be to overcome such tension, some crazy people at Simon Fraser University Locomotion Laboratory in Burnaby, Canada, have created a gadget that can be tied to your knee and it will charge your mobile phone battery!

If you properly see, you do a lot of action when you walk; a lot of muslces move and we wouldn't even notice or we're not interested to see!

Every time you take a step, your leg both accelerates and decelerates. Two groups of muscles, work towards making this happen. The first group pushes your leg forward, so that a step can be taken. Just as the leg is close to being fully extended, the second group starts pulling back your leg, braking your leg. And the key is this braking mechanism! At this point energy is being wasted...

This energy that is being wasted was intelligently noticed by Max Donelan, a researcher. He thus modified a knee brace, which was outfitted with a drivetrain, actually a generator. This was able to absorb that wasted energy and turn it into electricity, in a manner much similar to the braking system of hybrid vehicles, which are capable of recuperating energy while they are braking!

This device can now be used to suppy power to small devices like mobile phones, GPS receivers and can even power a certain motorized prosthetic joints. I was wondering how would this device feel since you are generating power and that mean that there should be some resistance! Frankly, though the entire thing weights around 1.6kg, the people who tested it have not found it that uncomfortable!

A small video about the same: