Batteries of the future may generate energy by shaking

Say the batteries in your remote control die. You could get up and walk across the room to change the channel, or you could spend the next half hour looking for a spare set of batteries. I know what I’d do, and I’m not proud of it. But what if there was another way to provide a little extra juice for your remote?

Brother Industries has developed a vibration-powered generator that can be made the same size as AA or AAA batteries. All you have to do is shake the battery to generate a bit of extra power.

We probably won’t see this technology in laptops or other consumer electronics devices with high energy demands anytime soon. But it’s ideal for remote controls because they don’t require a constant flow of power and they tend to use less than 100mW of energy. In other words, all you have to do is shake the remote a bit before you change the channel. They’d also make pretty decent flashlight batteries.

via Engadget and Geek.com

Posted on Sunday, July 18th, 2010, 10:46 am by Brad Linder

Pingback: In futuro potremmo dover agitare le batterie | Netbook News
Scottg52

I would guess it's a dynamo in the battery, a very OLD idea. Some newer radios and flashlights have them. Too bad the idea isn't put to better use.
aftermath

I like this, although I'm more of a modular guy than a monolithic guy and would prefer to see the means of power generation separated from its storage.

I believe that an interesting corollary to devices which have become increasingly efficient in terms of power consumption and increasingly mobile in terms of usage scenarios will be that the means of generating power for them will become increasingly manual and simple. For example, I'm a big proponent of gyroscopic hand and wrist exercisers for anybody who uses a computer on a daily basis. These can be found under a few different brands, and I'm aware of (but have neither tried nor even heard many first-hand accounts about) an adaption of these called “manual power” which translates the spinning of the internal rotor into electricity that be made to power devices over an attached USB connection. I believe that Freeplay also has similarly portable, manual power generators to quench our little gadgets.

It seems logical that if you're functionally dependent on your mobile technology then you should have your own means to generate power for it. I'll stop short of calling that logic a “no brainer” because it would imply that almost nobody actually has a brain.
Zviivz

Vibrators will not run out of juice!
http://home.comcast.net/~tomleem/ BigGoofyGuy

People in an earth quake prone areas will never have to worry about a dead battery?

Perhaps those who use the virbrator exercise devise could also be recharging their batteries by using these new one?

Batteries of the future may generate energy by shaking

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