MIT researchers may have figured out how to harness human motion to generate electricity

By Lulu Chang Published January 6, 2016

In our ongoing search for renewable energy resources, one of the least attainable thus far has been our own motion. But now, researchers at MIT seem prepared to change that — in a new paper published in Nature Communications, the team details how it developed a “novel class of mechanical energy harvesters via stress–voltage coupling in electrochemically alloyed electrodes,” or in English, motion-powered batteries.

Using electrochemical technology, the researchers have found a way to generate alternating current from the process of bending the new material back and forth. Essentially, the “battery” works by moving lithium ions between two electrodes. “You can think of it as two water tanks, each containing a lot of lithium,” Sangtae Kim, the MIT researcher who authored the recent paper told takepart.com. “In between the tanks we have this layer of electrolyte where only lithium ions can pass. In a conventional battery we move the lithium ions by supplying electricity. In this case, we press one water tank, or electrode, and that moves the lithium ions from the one electrode to the other.”

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This new method of energy production, Kim says, has the potential to be far more efficient than say, piezoelectrics, which refers to the generation of electricity from applied pressure. “For piezo, in almost all cases they are made of ceramic materials, which indicate that they don’t really conduct electricity,” Kim said. “So a vast amount of the electricity generated becomes heat.”

And while this new electrochemical method is currently just 15 percent efficient, Kim has high hopes that it could one day become 100 percent efficient.

The new tech is still a ways away from being implemented in real-life situations, however. “Currently it’s only a laboratory version that tests the mechanisms and demonstrates the principles,” Kim noted. “Our next step would be to stack these into the right engineering shape so that this can actually be used in real-life applications.”

So who knows — maybe one day you can charge your phone just by taking it for a walk.

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Fascinated by the effects of technology on human interaction, Lulu believes that if her parents can use your new app…

Computing

Google Gemini’s best AI tricks finally land on Microsoft Copilot

Copilot app for Mac

Microsoft’s Copilot had a rather splashy AI upgrade fest at the company’s recent event. Microsoft made a total of nine product announcements, which include the agentic trick called Actions, Memory, Vision, Pages, Shopping, and Copilot Search.

A healthy few have already appeared on rival AI products such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, alongside much smaller players like Perplexity and browser-maker Opera. However, two products that have found some vocal fan-following with Gemini and ChatGPT have finally landed on the Copilot platform.

Cars

Rivian set to unlock unmapped roads for Gen2 vehicles

rivian unmapped roads gen2 r1t gallery image 0

Rivian fans rejoice! Just a few weeks ago, Rivian rolled out automated, hands-off driving for its second-gen R1 vehicles with a game-changing software update. Yet, the new feature, which is only operational on mapped highways, had left many fans craving for more.
Now the company, which prides itself on listening to - and delivering on - what its customers want, didn’t wait long to signal a ‘map-free’ upgrade will be available later this year.
“One feedback we’ve heard loud and clear is that customers love [Highway Assist] but they want to use it in more places,” James Philbin, Rivian VP of autonomy, said on the podcast RivianTrackr Hangouts. “So that’s something kind of exciting we’re working on, we’re calling it internally ‘Map Free’, that we’re targeting for later this year.”
The lag between the release of Highway Assist (HWA) and Map Free automated driving gives time for the fleet of Rivian vehicles to gather ‘unique events’. These events are used to train Rivian’s offline model in the cloud before data is distilled back to individual vehicles.
As Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe explained in early March, HWA marked the very beginning of an expanding automated-driving feature set, “going from highways to surface roads, to turn-by-turn.”
For now, HWA still requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road. The system will send alerts if you drift too long without paying attention. But stay tuned—eyes-off driving is set for 2026.
It’s also part of what Rivian calls its “Giving you your time back” philosophy, the first of three pillars supporting Rivian’s vision over the next three to five years. Philbin says that philosophy is focused on “meeting drivers where they are”, as opposed to chasing full automation in the way other automakers, such as Tesla’s robotaxi, might be doing.
“We recognize a lot of people buy Rivians to go on these adventures, to have these amazing trips. They want to drive, and we want to let them drive,” Philbin says. “But there’s a lot of other driving that’s very monotonous, very boring, like on the highway. There, giving you your time back is how we can give the best experience.”
This will also eventually lead to the third pillar of Rivian’s vision, which is delivering Level 4, or high-automation vehicles: Those will offer features such as auto park or auto valet, where you can get out of your Rivian at the office, or at the airport, and it goes off and parks itself.
While not promising anything, Philbin says he believes the current Gen 2 hardware and platforms should be able to support these upcoming features.
The second pillar for Rivian is its focus on active safety features, as the EV-maker rewrote its entire autonomous vehicle (AV) system for its Gen2 models. This focus allowed Rivian’s R1T to be the only large truck in North America to get a Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“I believe there’s a lot of innovation in the active safety space, in terms of making those features more capable and preventing more accidents,” Philbin says. “Really the goal, the north star goal, would be to have Rivian be one of the safest vehicles on the road, not only for the occupants but also for other road users.”

Cars

Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan hit the brake on shipments to U.S. over tariffs

Range Rover Sport P400e

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced it will pause shipments of its UK-made cars to the United States this month, while it figures out how to respond to President Donald Trump's 25% tariff on imported cars.

"As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions, including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans," JLR said in a statement sent to various media.