The electricity-generating frame weighs about 10 pounds

Well crap on that... that's way too much extra weight for the benefit. I'd just carry a pound of batteries and last my CD player the 500 miles and then some.

But it is an interesting concept.

It's spelled "iPod" BTW.

And yes, Fark and Slashdot are now mirroring each other.

Psh, I make my energy like the Chinese do. By jumping up and down.

Geez, if you're that desperate, go here:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/71807/wo/Hh73G cfvH8eN2r0qyJYisziBzUT/1.0.15.1.0.6.25.7.11.9.1


Don't forget to take the spaces out, if they're in the url.

Yeah, wow, just like they did with kinetic watches. I'm very unimpressed. Although necessity breeds invention, this is one pretty useless invention, right now anyway.

When they make a television that is fap powered, i'll be impressed. You'll have to speed up your fapping if you want the movie to continue.

if all you need is up and down movement and some springs, why not harness the power of THE MATTRESS???

because for most farkers cracking there would be no power :(

oh, disappointing. How about using brothels? They could become the new Power Stations.

What about power generating bracelets for whores? Because you know they feel sad about not helping out the environment?

PLAN: lots of kangaroos in a cage with the floor covered in mattresses.... mighty powerful I would say.

unlicsenced nuclear accelerator?

I'll hold out for the wrist mounted version.

Why not create a water recycling unit from pumps in your soles and from breathing, to recycle the water your perspirate and urine so you can drink it from a tube. So your soldiers can go to terrible deserts like Afghanistan or Arrakis. Damn, it's probably already been thought of.

Spice melange is good for you

[cough] I believe that is enough power [hack!]for my electric cigarette lighter [gasp]

What if the power to produce the product was less then the output over time (or not a great ratio)?

What if the power produced causes burden issues (they said they are going to make a lighter model)?

What if we need more resource for energy? Can we not harvest ourselves without the pink goo?

The solar-powered backpack is lighter.
Voltaic Systems

George Bush hates field scientists, hikers, explorers, soldiers and disaster workers

Kinda hard to use nightvision goggles with the solar-powered backpack though, ain't it?

/Unless you want to set your eyes on fire.

It's a waste of time as nuclear batteries are less than a year away.

MaritimeGirl: The solar-powered backpack is lighter.

Screw iPod. What I want is a solar-powered backpack that can carry itself up to the top. I'll stroll along behind listening to my tunes with a few extra batteries in the pack.

Trinilos: How many people do you know (who aren't in the military) who skulk around at night with nightvision goggles? :) The battery pack stores power so it could technically work at night with the stored power from the day.

1. Invent useless product
2. ?????
3. Profit!

And yes, Fark and Slashdot are now mirroring each other.

Imagine if you had a beowulf cluster of them.

meekychuppet

It's a waste of time as nuclear batteries are less than a year away.

Ah, they'll never get out of beta (particle) testing.

pemdasi

What about power generating bracelets for whores? Because you know they feel sad about not helping out the environment?

Whores? I'd say there is a lot more free energy waiting to be tapped from porn watching males wearing bracelets. Though it's only on 1 minute bursts.

I had a great rant already, but the backspace ate it.

ah well, why not take a 1 pound recharger and 9 pounds of solar panels and get 15 times the power output.

the truth of the matter here is this... spring loaded backpacks are all nice and dandy but I'd rather not have my power output regulated by how much I'm carrying IN the backpack. This is just some jacked up version of that shake-it flashlight. Anybody that has ACTUALLY backpacked will tell you that more than a tenth of a second delay in the pack moving after you move can slip-break your ankles or throw you down the mountain in a bad situation.

This is kinda neat, but it not only soggs out the load characteristics of your backpack, but also extends the center of mass further out from your back, which is a major no-no. On top of that... a military application for something that sounds like a spring bed at a fark-hotel?
Jesus.

Squeekee-squeekee-squeekee-squeekee
"shh habib, the americans are coming, I hear their stupid backpacks!"

I DO see a good use for this though... make a heavy one, like 80 pound core, put rope hitches on each end and ship it with rope buffered chain and a grappling hook. Throw THAT over a tree-top and tie it to another tree trunk in any fair breeze... varoom!

Make little ones for insertion into running shoe heels for the damned iPod.
Seven watts, shiat, don't jerk me around and give my 60 pound load a 300% increase in shoulder pull leverage for 7 farking watts. I can make seven watts with a handcrank on my hip all day and still jack off at camp.
Figure some way to harness the fact that I'm climbing with a 60 pound pack on my back with a total load of 290 pounds. That's a good bit of effort. 7 watts is less than one one-hundredth of a horsepower. You could produce that much power with a three foot wind turbine strapped to my head while I walk at 2mph.

One HP comes out to about 1440 watts of power, given a loss of 20% you still have more than 1000 watts. At my peak of bike riding days I could push a pedal powered generator over a horsepower for about 3 minutes before I was exhausted, but I could hold a nice 100 watts output for 6 hours easily.

And as to night vision equipment, great idea. What if the soldier stops walking? This isn't an applicable use of something that REQUIRES motion. Milspec 1.5vAA batteries are easy enough to recharge from the hummer or bell, modern milspec NV binoculars will run for 8 hours on a sixteen minute recharge battery without a problem. Soldiers don't need to carry an additional ten pounds of insane gear to produce that kind of power, they have little hand crank generators available and buget funding to produce mass air-drops of AA batteries where needed.

The requirements for the design, the mass load necessary for power generation, everything about this makes it just plain stupid. Remember folks, that's an extra ten pounds in the backpack DURING THE DAY too.

Waste of time.

Now no reason?
Seems like now there would be a reason.

As soldiers, hikers and students can testify, it takes energy to haul around a heavy backpack. Now, researchers have developed a backpack that turns that energy into electricity.

Wow.

It doesn't turn that energy into electricity. That energy is already being used to haul the backpack. What it does is require *more* energy, from you, and turns it into electricity. The only reason the load's moving up and down on springs, generating power, is because you're sitting there driving it up and down, which takes more energy than if it were just static, a normal backpack. Not to mention the generator is additional load you have to carry, just like batteries would be.

No free lunch.

Ah, they'll never get out of beta (particle) testing


Well, I won't be buying the first ones as I'm sure they will have inadequate shielding and since my iPod goes in my pocket near my balls I'll wait until the design is tried and tested.

A speck of radioactive material powers them - Cadmium possibly (I'm not really clued up there). It's the future anyway.

Anyone seen the iPod nano btw? Cooolll.

This will be as successful as floor tiles that generate power when people walk on them.

knucklebreather

Well crap on that... that's way too much extra weight for the benefit. I'd just carry a pound of batteries and last my CD player the 500 miles and then some.

Well, it isn't for you, then, is it?

prjindigo

The requirements for the design, the mass load necessary for power generation, everything about this makes it just plain stupid.

I guess you never went for a long-distance trek. Hikers, soldiers, or relief-workers can easily carry 80 pounds of equipment. Spare batteries equal weight you could use to carry gear. Hand chargers mean you have to stop a turn a crank. This produces a constant 7 Watts with an 80 pound load. That's more than enough to charge GPS, cell phones, NVGs, all of which require milliwatts to charge.

It is a neat invention, why do you have to crap all over it? Cynical pricks here today.

oh yah, and about "soldiers in afghanistan"

the afghani population would steal these backpacks faster than you can say "don't take your boots off in an italian whorehouse" to your doughboy...

quote me on it, Ermy would.

Phanatic1a

It doesn't turn that energy into electricity. That energy is already being used to haul the backpack. What it does is require *more* energy, from you, and turns it into electricity.

From the press release:

ontrary to what might be expected, wearing the Suspended-load Backpack does not use up much more metabolic energy than walking while wearing a conventional backpack of the same weight. According to Rome and his colleagues, it is likely that wearers can change their stride to compensate for movement of the load, which makes walking more efficient.

"Metabolically speaking, we've found this to be much cheaper than we anticipated. The energy you exert could be offset by carrying an extra snack, which is nothing compared to weight of extra batteries," Rome said. "Pound for pound, food contains about 100-fold more energy than batteries."

I agree with Atomsmoosher. People who say this is useless simply never do anything challenging enough to use it. I love it and I think it will be great for my various trek's etc.

Burton's Bluetooth snowboarding jacket has hands free for your (Bluetooth) phone, iPod solar power charging and playback as well as a wrist mount graphical iPod interface. I've got one and it's marvellous.

Wearable tech is on the up.

Not to mention the generator is additional load you have to carry, just like batteries would be.


The generator only weighs a few ounces. It is that little thing with the black electrical tape at the top of the picture: http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/photos/841/841.jpg

You can read the Science paper through the MSNBC link.

Pre-emption argument:


iPods are expensive branded crap. My (iRiver, Archos, tape recorder etc ) is much better, and cheaper.

People who buy iPods are delusional sheeple.


/Archos has 100gig machine; looks very tasty.

As a soldier in the 10th Mountain(Light Infantry), I can honestly say that unless they get that POS under 1-2 lbs, no military is going to go for it. I'm not carrying that on top of 80 lbs of other gear already. If you took that 10 lb backpack vs 10 lbs of batteries for NVG's, I guarentee the pack would fail before the 10 lbs of batteries would run out. And have you ever seen someone carry a really heavy backpack? It doesn't bounce up and down.

/my $.02
/glad I can read Fark through DOD filters

iPods are expensive branded crap. My (iRiver, Archos, tape recorder etc ) is much better, and cheaper.

People who buy iPods are delusional sheeple.

No.

kiretul

This was apparently just the kit the researcher threw together with an old aluminum frame backpack. I'm sure the company that's commercializing it will scale it back.

What you folks here don't seem to appreciate is that this isn't the new iPod. It's a kit-bashed prototype with some nifty science behind it. (The researcher is a biologist who normally studies frog and fish movement.)

Hi, Professor, the 2nd law of thermodynamics just called. Wants to know where you think this energy is coming from.

The backpackers legs have to work more. Simple as that.

Stupid idea.

Hi, Professor, the 2nd law of thermodynamics just called. Wants to know where you think this energy is coming from.

The backpackers legs have to work more. Simple as that.

Stupid idea.


Hi, Professor, the 2nd law of thermodynamics also wants to know why you think people backpack? To work hard and get fitter. Simple as that.

Stupid criticism.

LuckyPierre

Why bother throwing shiat if you don't bother reading the article?

They showed little metabolic expense over walking with a normal backpack, which they attributed to change in gait of the wearer. Most of the energy in walking is done to propel the hips over the foot, the backpack grabs onto a small portion of the energy lost here.

Most of the energy in walking is done to propel the hips over the foot, the backpack grabs onto a small portion of the energy lost here.

If the energy's going to propel the hips over the foot, it's not being "lost," it's being used to propel the hips over the foot. If you tap some of that energy off, the walker will have to expend more energy to propel the hips over the foot than he otherwise would have.

Atomsmoosher:

from the press release

Do you always believe *press releases*?

Phanatic1a

Well, I am in PR and I know the guy who wrote it. Actually, all the details in the release is in the Science article and is easily readable even by skeptical chumps. Science is one of the leading peer-reviewed journals on the planet. So, yeah, I kind of believe the press release, especially where it quotes the prof.

Phanatic1a

If the energy's going to propel the hips over the foot, it's not being "lost," it's being used to propel the hips over the foot. If you tap some of that energy off, the walker will have to expend more energy to propel the hips over the foot than he otherwise would have.

You're right, of course, I'm not thinking clearly. Rome assumed, like you do, that there would be a huge metabolic expenditure here. It turns out there really isn't -- he had his students walk on a treadmill and measured oxygen use. He thinks that the low metabolic cost comes from a change in gait, adapting to a more efficient stride.