Patents on the soles of your shoes...: urban sprawl

Monday, May 22, 2017

Oh, patents! Pavegen Systems

According to Pavegen Systems, it's not only patents on the soles of your shoes, it’s POWER! Power to light up the world, thousands of footsteps at a time, every day!

Pavegen Systems is a British company that manufactures pavement tiles designed to harvest the kinetic energy of pedestrian footsteps and/or vehicle traffic, in view of transforming this energy into electricity used for street lamps and buildings. Technically, the invention consists in capturing kinetic energy in the form of linear motion and translating it to rotational movement suitable for driving the rotor of an electric generator.

Beyond generating about 2.1 watts per hour of energy in high pedestrian traffic areas (or 20 seconds of light with each footstep), the Pavegen Systems tiles also become part of the Internet of Things (IoT), creating data for use in marketing, for transportation and in municipalities. “It’s knowing where people are” according to one of the inventors, Laurence Kemball-Cook, CEO and Founder of Pavegen Systems. It is also knowing what people do, when for example the tiles installed in a fitness center are connected to mobile devices, in view of providing various sorts of health fitness feedback to users, considering the number of their steps.

In the future, Pavegen Systems intend to produce tiles to pave roads and harvest the kinetic energy of vehicle traffic. But this is apparently more difficult, considering the tremendous traction forces of heavyweight traffic, and the resistance of the materials required to pave roads.

This real and sparkling clean, green technology, designed for the 21st-century urban center, was awarded the SXSW™ 2017 Interactive Innovation Award in the Smart Cities category.

This invention was disclosed in the following patent family:

WO2011138585 (A1) ― 2011-11-10 - Energy harvesting
US2013068047 (A1) ― 2013-03-21 - Energy harvesting
US8736088 (B2) ― 2014-05-27 - Energy harvesting
EP2567091 (B1) ― 2017-03-29 - Energy harvesting
EP2567091 (A1) ― 2013-03-13 - Energy harvesting
BR112012029524 (A2) ― 2016-12-06 - Energy harvesting
AU2011249636 (B2) ― 2014-07-10 - Energy harvesting
AU2011249636 (A1) ― 2012-11-22 - Energy harvesting
CN102906422 (A) ― 2013-01-30 - Energy harvesting
CN102906422 (B) ― 2015-08-19 - Energy harvesting

The abstract of this invention is included below as well as a patent figure drawing of the Pavegen systems motion converter.

The present application describes techniques for the harvesting of kinetic energy from the movement of people and/or vehicles. A motion converter is discussed which converts linear progression caused by traffic-related impulse forces, to be converted to rotational motion for driving the rotor of an electricity generator. An assembly for harvesting energy including the motion converter and a floor unit are also described

[Abstract - US2013068047 & Family]

References

Pavegen Systems

http://www.pavegen.com

SXSW™ 2017 (South by SouthWest)

https://www.sxsw.com/

Monday, April 29, 2013

Oh, patents! Waboba® Street Balls

Wanna have mo’ ball fun! On land, on your urban turf! From the same Swedish inventor as the Waboba® water ball, Jan von Heland, comes a Waboba® Street Ball, designed for the concrete sprawl. This ball has just the right unpredictability in terms of bounce! Just for the fun of it! That is, the Street Ball’s bounce is not totally predictable like all the balls for games where the player scores to hit or catch the ball. And its bounce is not completely unpredictable like training balls designed to sharpen catching or hitting skills. Thus, somewhere in between the completely predictable and the completely erratic bounce, there is the Waboba® Street Ball bounce or PLAYING OBJECT HAVING A BOUNCE WITH LIMITED UNPREDICTABILITY.

The Waboba® Street Ball is a polyhedron divided into equal sized parts but whose different parts consist of protrusions of varying height. This regular, but uneven surface causes the ball to bounce unpredictably, but not in completely erratic ways. The patent offers 8 different protrusion configurations using the same calculations, and further offers detachable and movable protrusions enabling the user to re-set the unpredictability of the bounce by just snapping the protrusions into the core surface of the ball.

The marketed Waboba® Street Ball is the size of a handball, and it promises lots of concrete fun!

Abstract US2012071281

The present invention relates to a playing object (21) having a main surface (13, 14, 16) enclosing and provided around a center of gravity, said main surface being provided with elements (22) in a pattern around the center of gravity, where each element has an element surface extending away from the main surface. The playing object may be a polyhedron and some of the elements may have a different appearance than the majority of elements.