Device gathers energy from air to power electronic items

IT may soon be possible to power electronic items from energy in the air thanks to a gadget that can generate energy from the atmosphere.

These ‘energy scavenging’ devices could even be stored in people’s shoes.

“There is a large amount of electromagnetic energy all around us, but nobody has been able to tap into it,” said Manos Tentzeris, professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

So far they have only been able to gather enough energy to power small sensors and RFID tags, but researchers hope that when it is combined with advanced capacitor technology, the device could provide up to 50 milliwatts. It is not quite on the level of Nikola Tesla who experimented with transmitting electrical fields via vast tower networks, but more like siphoning juice from someone else’s battery.