Weeks 11-12 Progress Report

Updated Gantt Schedule (barring date updates) to account for the recent parallelization.

The time off from school allowed us both to work on our independent projects. As we had planned to in the previous progress report, we branched off into different sectors: Allen focused on capturing raw data from gait analyses in order to determine a theoretical yield of kinetic energy produced by walking, and Max ventured off into the 3D modeling world to construct a design for the magnetic ball track we will be implementing into our generator. Unfortunately, he has "boycotted" against making blog posts, but he is without a doubt doing great work.
Allen used a clip of himself filmed (by Max) with a 60 fps camera walking on a treadmill. Using Kinovea, he was able to track the movement of his outer knee by using the "tracking tool" to follow a neon orange sticker placed on the knee. From here, he was able to compute a lot of data, from horizontal velocity to position to speed. But what he was looking for most was angular velocity, or the velocity of an object rotating along an axis. He has the stored stored on Excel and in the form of a graph, which he plans on taking the average of, either as a whole or per walking cycle. The point is to try to obtain a theoretical value for kinetic energy generated. The formula for rotational kinetic energy is .5(angular velocity)(moment of inertia). The angular velocity has been collected, but the moment of inertia, or the point mass with respect to a rotating axis, will be harder to derive. That will be Allen's main focus for next week: continue to work on the calculation of the theoretical kinetic energy generated, specifically by computing the moment of inertia. Max will touch up the 3D model by adding thickness to the tracking, and possibly step into circuit designing.

Graph of Angular Velocity (rad/s) vs. Time (ms)

Week 10 Progress Report

This week, we moved away from our Gantt Chart in the sense of parallelization; we 'went our seperate ways,' with Max focusing on the physical generator and Allen focusing on the analysis of gait motion.

Max created a block diagram to plan the design of the generator. This diagram includes the components that are included in the generator and helps to display a visual plan for the eventual designing and physical construction of the generator. His next step will be to translate these diagrams into 3D models. This will be done using Google SketchUp and the nodes isolated by the block diagrams to render designs of the different components that comprise the generator.

Allen went into more depth on the "Human Walking Analysis, Evacuation and Classification Based on Motion Capture System," which highlighted some key variables that some classmates had mentioned in their review of our presentation last week. Everyone has a unique walk, and it differs from gender and age. Balance is also a vital piece of walking. In terms of previous gait analysis research, most tend to focus on the sagittal (profile view) plane and ignore the traversal plane and frontal view. The researchers created a fourteen-linkage walking model, consisting of nineteen points, fourteen segments and twelve joints. This paper used motion capture technology to take down data, ranging from velocity to in-depty cycle data. After all, a walk is really just a series of periodic movements (for the knee). The data points to highest velocity occurring at the knee, but Allen will be looking to find other papers to compare.

Additionally, this week he began narrowing down choices for a video analysis tool. The idea is for him to record himself walking on a treadmill with some sort of market attached to his knee. The two video analysis programs are Kinivea and Sports Motion, which he'll work with on the same video and evaluate which gives the most comprehensive data.

Week 8 Progress Report

This shortened week served as, essentially, an extension of what we worked on last week. We just recently got our hands on a LED light band, and the goal is to attach it one of our knees and film the motion of walking with the band in a dark room. The idea is to see if there actually is viable kinetic energy there to be extracted and converted into electrical energy. And while that will be apparent to the eye, it will still require some sort of function or program to pull some quantitative data out of that. We are also planning on contacting the people behind the BioMotionLab animation of the walking motion of the human (see last week's post) to enquire the possibility of receiving any numerical data from them. Kinetic energy is defined as .5(m)(v^2), and if mass remains constant when walking, the velocity (directly proportional to kinetic energy) is where we must focus on. Just after school we came across this paper detailing the analysis of human walking provides a table on p. 392 that shows that the knee contained the highest VMo (velocity motion data) of the tested body parts. The paper is clearly quite dense and will require a more thorough evaluation, but it could be useful to us.
We also researched different parts for our project, namely the magnetic neodymium balls. Thankfully they are all very cheap, none costing more than 10 cents a ball. Several sites are: http://neoballs.com/#, https://www.kjmagnetics.com/products.asp?cat=12, http://www.magnet4less.com/index.php?cPath=1_14.

Week 7 Progress Report

To keep in accordance with our Gantt Chart, this week was focused on beginning to research and render different product designs. Initially, we needed to identify where on the human body we could extract the most kinetic energy. On Monday we talked through different options, from the linear motion from walking with a backpack (like the npower Peg) to the swinging motion of an arm. We came across this animation of the human walking motion and analyzed the different areas of the body. We noticed that the knee experiences the greatest change in height out of all of the body parts during walking. This means that the knee has the most potential energy at certain points in its revolution. Based on this information we decided to design a product that utilizes this centripetal force and change of direction in the knee.
We also successfully drew a diagram and decided upon a method which which electricity will be conducted. Our generator will use a arm with a pivot in the middle of the generator with a neodymium magnet connected to the end. 

Week 6 Progress Report

The week following the Patent search presentation has largely been focused on looking to other applications of our proposed product. In fact, we actually took a step back and thought of areas in which energy is being wasted, and how we could possibly hone that energy and make feed it back into the system for useful purposes, like charging mobile devices. Max came up with the idea of utilizing the rapid RPM's of spinning car wheels and using the strong centripetal motion found there in order to move magnets within a magnetic field in that rapid, circular motion. Mr. Lin then pointed our attention to the story of a kid who attempted harnessing the wasted energy from pumping water into faucets and buildings. This all pertains to our idea: using the energy that is not used to charge a device. Following the conclusion of the first marking period, we would love to get started on some physical, hands-on brainstorming and tinkering.

Week 5 Progress Report

This week concluded our Patent Search. While we conducted our research, we looked for generators that pertained specifically to our proposed directionality of the movement of the magnets within the coils: centripetal vs. the linear motion that exists already in the current kinetic energy generator on the market the nPower peg). Reading the patents alone was certainly not substantial; the text was usually very difficult to understand. We feel that it would have helped to have read through papers and study the components of electricity generation, circuit design, generators etc. before searching up patents. The next week will see us continue brainstorming exactly how to piece together our project. We additionally received a computer fan from Mr. Lin to test out the free-energy theory with a series of neodymium magnets. Unfortunately, however, the fan's blade were a little too convexed towards the motor, but we could definitely test out the free-energy proposal.

Weekly 4 Progress Report

This week we focused on the complex system of patenting. Mr. Lin presented a slideshow on the art of navigation the U.S. patent website which helped us profusely. Equipped with this knowledge we were able to conduct research and come up with 10 patents pertaining to our project. Our patent search consisted of a preliminary search conducted via Google Patents©. With this we found a few useful patents, one of which included a generator that utilizes linear energy to generate electricity.

It was based on this discovery that we decided to change our method of electricity generation. We then conducted research on the us patent database by using the subclasses found in our preliminary patent research. Researching these patens has been highly constructive and we now hope to focus our efforts towards researching the design out our physical product.

Week 3 Progress Report

This week, our assignment was to construct a network diagram and Gantt Project Schedule. Collaborating on the two helped us visualize how long this project will take and how the individual tasks may be broken up based on dependency and duration. The two project management assignments also allowed us to take a step back and analyze the project as a collective whole. We started with a basic task list to acquire an understanding of the basic steps we need to take in order to successfully complete the project. That then led to the creation of our AOA Diagram and Dependency/Duration chart. Finally, taking in all that info, we were able to construct a Gantt Schedule with GanttProject, which helped us visualize the length of this project and identify key stages that can be combined to work in parallels to be more efficient.      

Dependency/Duration Chart

Activity on Arrow

Gantt Schedule Manager

Next week, we commence the preliminary step outlined in our diagrams: the research. We plan on splitting that research up among ourselves, as being compiled in a series of parallels makes the research more efficient and less time-consuming. However, we will still work in conjunction and share what we learn, for the concepts involved with our proposed product are very intertwined. Therefore, we both need to fully understand all the components of our research.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Week 2 Progress Report

This week, we presented our Action Items to the class. These included a more refined task list and project schedule. The biggest feedback we received was concerning our vision for the high-level designing portion of our project; we now are going to be allocating more time earlier in the project to sift through our proposed materials and ideas in order to identify the key components. This process requires accounting for the feasibilities of these key components in order to asses what can and cannot realistically happen with this project (i.e. ordering certain materials because a high cost, timing etc.)
The network diagrams on which we're currently working will help guide us through the planning stages of our project. They will also serve as useful aids in finding the key components of our project through high-level design and in allocating our time and resources efficiently.
For the coming week, Max and I will commence the high-level design portion of the project by researching different parts and materials and start drawing up a financial spreadsheet.

Week 1 Progress Report

So far I've been researching the legality of our product design to make sure that it doesn't interfere with the kinetic energy charger already on the market (Tremont Electric's nPower peg) and other available technologies.
And so far, we haven't seen anything that follows the same design constructed by Max - a hockey puck-shaped contraption in which powerful neodymium magnets (or any affordable rare earth magnets) travel in a circular fashion within copper coils as the user walks in order to generate an electromagnetic field.
For next week, we'll have to focus on the generator portion of our product, how we can take this energy and harvest it into a battery. We don't anticipate that we'll be working hands-on with circuits and magnets and everything next week, but it would certainly be a bonus if we could. For now, we must keep driving our research even further in order to continue our goal of creating an innovative, efficient product.

Weekly Progress Report

Project groups are required to maintain Weekly Progress Report about their progress. The report is due every Thursday. The writing should be clear and concise. The following list is a template for your report.

• Progress: list of tasks accomplished, problems solved, questions answered, lessons learned, new idea identified, etc. Include any images and/or videos of your experiments, presentations and/or documents of your results, links and/or printing references, and acknowledgements of external support.
• Problem: difficulties encountered, missing information, equipments required, materials missed, open issues, new risks or show stopper identified, etc.
• Plan: steps to attack the problems, action items, experiments to conduct, ideas to try, etc. Show your schedule and task assignment for each group member for the coming week.