Imagine a future where appliances would be powered by your movements. Every step you take generates a certain amount of energy. This energy if harvested could be stored and used to provide power to electrical appliances.Seems like a matrix Movie theme, doesn’t it? But in fact this is possible. Muscular energy is one of the oldest types of energy used by people. The concept that lies underneath is that gathering of energy from one source and applying it to power an object. But how does this work? For example, In Hong Kong, a human powered gym, called ‘California Fitness’ is has spinning bikes connected to wind-generator motors. The users would generate enough electricity to power the gym’s music system or run personal DVD players on the machines. Italian inventor Lucien Gambarota, who designed California Fitness is storing energy and using it to power lights and music in the gym.

The advantage: This would provide businesses with a “greener” way of producing energy. Other examples of human powered gyms are present in Portland, Oregon. Similarly this concept has been used in a dance club, Club Watt, in Rotterdam, Netherlands ,’Club Surya’ in London and ‘river gyms’ in New York.

But the implementation in a dance club is bit more complex. Two methods have developed — the first of which is piezoelectricity, used by Club Surya, where crystals in blocks under the dance-floor rub together with the assistance of dancers on the floor. This generates an electrical charge which is then fed into batteries. A second method using wheels to generate energy under a slightly moving floor will be used at the soon-to-be-opened Club Watt. This model involves coils and magnets which move under the dance-floor to create a charge.

Verkooijen, A spokeswoman for Sustainable Dance Club said the human power would be enough to power about 30 percent of the club’s requirements. The designers are already working on new models to improve the amount of energy captured. Also power shortages could be made up by solar panels and a wind turbine.

Application: Probably places like bus and train stations – places where there are lots of people .Similarly this could be applied to from pedal-powered computers on bicycles, to self-powered soldiers in militaries in the coming years. Also at home, the idea of using human powered batteries for television and video games console isn’t very far.

Criticism : Critics are skeptical about the future of human-power on a mass-scale in terms of its economic use for home purpose. This is because the average amount of power one person could produce going about normal activities on any given day was about one kilowatt-hour (kWh), which only amounted to about € 0.10 worth of electricity.Thus It seems a very good marketing tool for businesses, but it terms of economics it does not make sense at all.” Also such technology comes at a price which would not be affordable for an individual.

Observing recent trends, the push for ‘green energy’ should continue to push human-powered technology forward, and despite the limitations to development, human-powered gyms, dance clubs, and maybe even video game consoles are likely to feature strongly in our immediate future.