Projects aim to tap energy from shoes, speed breakers

The ideas, developed by students of various engineering colleges, were showcased at finals of CreaTech

Mumbai, 06/03/2020: Students of NIiT Durgapur explain visitors their project of Hi Tech Shoe which can be use for mobile charging, which generates power during CreaTech a high-tech exhibition cum competition, where 10 teams of premier engineering colleges across Indial showcase their hi-tech projects, at L &T campus in Powai, Mumbai. Students explains by walking in this shoes Piezoelectric sensors installed under sole of shoe generates voltage due to the pressure exerted by human. This voltage stored in the battery. The charge battery can be used as power source for the light source or mobile charging. Photo: Aadesh Choudhari

Tapping energy from walking, generating electricity from speed breakers, capturing waste heat generated from air conditioning units and using a mobile application to measure the dimensions, were some of the major ideas showcased by students at CreaTech, a competition organised by Larsen & Toubro.

A team of three second year students from the National Institute of Technology, Durgapur, bagged the top prize at the final held in Mumbai last week. The team had created a set of four solutions aimed at harvesting power at construction sites.

The first solution sought to convert the pressure exerted by vehicles on speed breakers into electric energy using a rack and pinion mechanism, where electricity would be generated every time a vehicle passed over the speed breakers. Rahul Mohata, one of the team members, said that the mechanism would also help in smart parking within construction sites by keeping a tab on the number of vehicles that pass through the speed breakers.

The other key solutions included the use of ‘smart’ shoes which used piezo sensors to convert mechanical stress into electrical energy. The shoes are equipped with a battery that would be charged by the energy produced while walking and having sensor-based lighting on streets that would light up only when a vehicle is passing.

The first runners-up, were a team from Vellore Institute of Technology, who developed a mobile application called ‘Naap’. The application was designed to use any regular camera on a phone and accurately ascertain the dimensions of the space. The user only had to input his or her height in centimetres and the rest would be calculated based on the eye level of the user.

The competition was started in 2019 to encourage top engineering talent in the country to solve challenges that the company and the industry at large were also engaged in solving. The students were expected to send synopsis of their solution to six problems that were decided by the company.

These included waste heat management, network continuity, power harvesting, variable intensity lights, image processing and conversion of conventional substation to digital substation. Based on the synopsis, the jury selected nine teams out of 350 who submitted their synopsis. These nine teams were asked to build a prototype and present it in the finals.