We’ve been following SolePower from some time now, from an elevator pitch last year at an MIT Enterprise Forum of Pittsburgh event through AlphaLab and Demo Day. Now the team has a live Kickstarter campaign to try to raise $50,000 to further push product development.
The company is developing a shoe insert that can take the energy generated from walking and turn it into usable electricity that can be used to power portable electronics. By creating a shoe insert, the device can be used in any shoe instead of the built-in-shoe varieties that are also floating around out there.
The insert charges a battery that can then be used to charge a cell phone. The team is working to make sure that a phone can be charged after 2.5 miles of walking.
The Kickstarter campaign is just looking to raise a small portion of the $500,000 the team said it was seeking at Demo Day. So far the prototype has been made by the team members at TechShop Pittsburgh.
Beta testing is expected this summer. Then there will be more design and production work and full production and distribution is expected in the second half of 2014.
At least 12 years ago SRI International (a research and development co in Menlo Park, CA) developed this concept from a polymer they invented.
ReplyDeleteOur troops used it in their boots in Iraq.
I was working there at the time and saw the information posted on a wall.
Cliff.
Go to their web site and look up Electroactive Polymer.
ReplyDeleteThis is amazing stuff.
They may be able to help you.