Walk

Although you may not be using a Get Smart-style shoe phone anytime soon, it is possible that your mobile phone may end up receiving its power from your shoes. University of Wisconsin-Madison engineering researchers Tom Krupenkin and J. Ashley Taylor have developed an in-shoe system that harvests the energy generated by walking. Currently, this energy is lost as heat. With their technology, however, they claim that up to 20 watts of electricity could be generated, and stored in an incorporated rechargeable battery.  Read More

The humble dog collar might seem like something that couldn't really be improved upon in any significant way, but ... what if you combined it with a leash? Well, what you'd end up with is the Supercollar. It's a polypropylene collar, with a three-foot (0.9-meter) retractable leash built into it. Perhaps not necessary in all situations, but there a few where it might come in handy.  Read More

There may not be many people interested in the precise measurement of all the forces and movements that are at play as someone walks, but for those few, a new tool has been developed to help them carry out their research - ForceShoes. Developed by researchers at the University of Twente's MIRA research institute in The Netherlands, these modest-looking sandals feature high-tech data-gathering electronics.  Read More

Can killing monsters help physically-challenged children learn to walk? It can if they’re virtual monsters, that are part of a balance-developing system created by engineering and computer game design students from Houston’s Rice University. Called the Equiliberator, the system consists of five linked Wii Balance Boards with two pressure-sensitive hand rails running along either side, all of which are linked by Bluetooth to a PC running a custom-designed video game. Children using the setup are able to kill on-screen monsters, by successfully performing exercises that build their balance skills.  Read More

As children get chubbier and chubbier, finding ways of motivating them to exercise becomes more and more important. Rich and Sheri Schmelzer and Alexandra O'Leary have taken the approach of creating their GeoPalz pedometers, that record how far children walk, so they can then redeem their miles for free prizes and awards on the company’s website. As anyone who spent their childhood proudly working their way up the YM/YWCA’s hierarchy of sew-on swimming crests will tell you ... it’s not a bad idea.  Read More

According to tests recently performed at the University of Manchester, two ancient Egyptian artificial big toes were likely used by their owners for walking, and not simply placed on their dead bodies for religious or ritualistic reasons. If so, it would make them the world's earliest-known prosthetic devices. The tests involved getting big-toeless volunteers to try walking while wearing replicas of the two toes ... and the toes were up to the task.  Read More

Everyone knows that, unless you’re extraordinarily gifted, you need to crawl before you can walk. Turns out the same principle could also apply to robots. In a first-of-its-kind experiment conducted by University of Vermont (UVM) roboticist Josh Bongard created both simulated and physical robots that, like tadpoles becoming frogs, change their body forms while learning how to walk. He found that these evolving robots were able to learn more rapidly than ones with fixed body forms and that, in their final form, the changing robots had developed a more robust gait.  Read More

At a press conference held this morning in San Francisco, California’s Berkeley Bionics unveiled its eLEGS exoskeleton. The computer-controlled device is designed to be worn by paraplegics, providing the power and support to get them out of their wheelchairs, into a standing posture, and walking – albeit with the aid of crutches. The two formerly wheelchair-bound “test pilots” in attendance did indeed use eLEGS to walk across the stage, in a slow-but-steady gait similar to that of full-time crutch-users.  Read More

Molecular machines that seem to "walk" in living organisms transporting proteins between cells are the subject of a new study by University of California, Riverside researchers who hope to find out more about how these remarkable machines behave, in a development that could lead to important breakthroughs in medicine and the manufacturing of electronic devices.  Read More