Power Bits: New Reasons To Travel With Your Phone
Better Fuel Efficiency With Your Phone
Smart phones are getting smarter and much more powerful, but it’s hard to actually say they’re phones anymore. They’re more like universal communications devices, and they’re being put to new and interesting uses all the time.
The most recent example comes from engineers at Princeton and MIT, who have created a network of on-dash smart phones that collect information about traffic signals and help drivers optimize their speed to avoid red lights. The result, according to MIT, is that drivers using this system cut fuel consumption by 20%.
At the heart of this scheme is a mobile grid computing concept that overlays real-time data on a map, similar to what GPS traffic re-routing does. The new wrinkle is this system collects live data from phones and integrates that with a calculation for optimal speed.
In Cambridge, Mass., though, where MIT is located, the traffic lights are on fixed schedules. In areas with non-fixed schedules—the so-called “smart lights”—the length of the green and red signals has to be estimated. What’s particularly interesting about this application is that even in dense traffic areas the estimates were off by no more than a couple seconds.
Take Your Phone For A Walk
University of Wisconsin researchers have developed an energy-harvesting system that fits into the sole of a shoe to charge a cell phone battery or any other device that it happens to be connected to.
What’s important here is the amount of energy generated by walking—watts rather than milliwatts. And in the case of a sprinter, it can actually be in the kilowatt range. Hook a treadmill up to the grid and you might actually get paid for exercising.
The approach relies on microfluidics to push droplets back and forth in what the university calls “reverse electrowetting.”
Just wait until you have to explain this one to airport security, though.
–Ed Sperling
Tags: energy harvesting, MIT, Princeton, University of Wisconsin