TenXsys of Boise tries to turn motion into energy – Walking might one day be able to power cell phone

What if you could capture the energy that comes from a bird flapping its wings?

What if you never needed to recharge your cell phone again?

Those "what ifs" are linked in a study launched by a local technology firm and funded through an $80,000 federal grant.

Julie Howard
The Idaho Statesman

http://www.idahostatesman.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040525/NEWS0202/405250317/1029/NEWS02

TenXsys Inc. http://www.tenxsys.com will work with Raptor Research Center and engineering students at Boise State University to study whether enough electrical power can be generated from birds to power small devices.

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Two contracts will ship this summer

TenXsys already has developed monitors for animal and bird tracking, and has two contracts for shipping its new products this summer.

One contract is with Canada, where monitors will be attached to osprey and geese to determine the effects of low-flying aircraft. The monitors will measure the birds’ heart rate and location and include microphones so researchers can tell when the aircraft was heard.

The second contract is with Austria, where monitors will be placed inside eggs in nests near traffic areas and quarries to determine whether nesting habits are affected.

TenXsys also makes monitors for larger animals such as caribou.

— Julie Howard

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TenXsys CEO and President Frank Riskey believes that if the project proves successful, the concept could be expanded to humans and various handheld devices.

"It irks me that I have to plug in my cell phone and PDA for recharging after lugging them around all day," said Riskey, a computer scientist. "I think there is sufficient energy available to recharge the cell phone as it is moved about while clipped to my belt as I walk. Imagine if all you had to do was walk around for your cell phone to get charged up."

And don’t worry. No one’s going to hook little birds up to power-generating machines.

The research will focus on whether monitoring devices currently used on birds to track habits or flight patterns, for instance, can be powered by the movements of the birds themselves. Eliminating or reducing the need for batteries could help create a new generation of small, long-lasting monitoring devices for use in studying threatened, endangered, or poorly understood animal species, said Riskey.

Kirk Bates, a research associate at BSU’s Raptor Research Center, said the technology could allow researchers to track even smaller birds and animals.

"There are so many people who would love to study small migratory birds," said Bates, explaining that those birds are too small to carry long-range satellite-tracking devices. "If those type of devices could be made smaller, the number of users of this technology could expand exponentially."

But first things first.

TenXsys’ initial study will determine how much power is generated by animal movement. To do that, Riskey is working with BSU mechanical engineering students to develop an instrument that can be attached to, say, homing pigeons to measure the energy created when they move about.

The challenge, said Riskey, is to develop a measuring device that can capture energy regardless of how the bird is moving — whether in a bobbing motion while walking or the up and down motion of flying. The next step will be to develop a device that would transfer the energy from the bird to the monitor.

From there, it’s not a big leap to imagine other devices that can harness the energy of small movements, said Riskey.

"It would make sense that just the little motions you make walking around would generate enough energy to charge the phone on your belt," he said. "It could work with hearing aids, pacemakers and other medical devices."

The study will be done through summer, then the company would apply for a second grant to build a prototype device.

While capturing energy from movement has happened on large scales — river water passing through a dam, for instance, to powers entire cities — the electronics hasn’t been available on a small scale until recently, said Riskey.

"There’s been a revolution in microelectromechanical systems (known as MEMS)," he said. "Now they’re smaller, and that allows this type of research to happen."

TenXsys, founded in 2002, also does work in real-time software development and smart sensors.