To all perpetual students, that heavy ass backpack can now do more than haul around those $100 textbooks you never use - you can now generate your own electricity.
A backpack that generates electricity as its wearer strolls along has been developed by experts in human locomotion.
By harnessing the looping up and down motion of our hips as we walk, the backpacks' freely-moving load bounces up and down, generating up to 7 watts. That is more than enough to power cellphones, pda's, digital camera, Gameboys and PSPs.
There's also a social utilitarian function to these packs. Scientists hope they will be a standard among troops, field researchers, explorers and rescue workers who need to generate their own power.
All very cool but I say, this is just a hop-skip-and-jump away into a future where all humans generate their own power for our robot overloads.
via new scientist