[Editors] MIT "Crowd Farm" will harvest energy of human movement

[Patti Richards]

MIT News Office
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Room 11-400
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139-4307
Phone: 617-253-2700
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/www

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MIT duo see people-powered "Crowd Farm"
Plan would harvest energy of human movement
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For Immediate Release
TUESDAY, JULY 31, 2007
Contact: Patti Richards
Phone: 617-253-8923
Email: prichards at mit.edu

PHOTOS AVAILABLE

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Two graduate students at MIT's School of 
Architecture and Planning want to harvest the energy of human 
movement in urban settings, like commuters in a train station or fans 
at a concert.

The so-called "Crowd Farm," as envisioned by James Graham and 
Thaddeus Jusczyk, would turn the mechanical energy of people walking 
or jumping into a source of electricity. Their proposal took first 
place in the Japan-based Holcim Foundation's Sustainable Construction 
competition this year.

A Crowd Farm in Boston's South Station railway terminal would work 
like this: A responsive sub-flooring system made up of blocks that 
depress slightly under the force of human steps would be installed 
beneath the station's main lobby. The slippage of the blocks against 
one another as people walked would generate power through the 
principle of the dynamo, a device that converts the energy of motion 
into that of an electric current.

The electric current generated by the Crowd Farm could then be used 
for educational purposes, such as lighting up a sign about energy. 
"We want people to understand the direct relationship between their 
movement and the energy produced," says Juscyzk.

The Crowd Farm is not intended for home use. According to Graham and 
Jusczy, a single human step can only power two 60W light bulbs for 
one flickering second. But get a crowd in motion, multiply that 
single step by 28,527 steps, for example, and the result is enough 
energy to power a moving train for one second. 

And while the farm is an urban vision, the dynamo-floor principle can 
also be applied to capturing energy at places like rock concerts, 
too. "Greater movement of people could make the music louder," 
suggests Jurcyzk.

The students' test case, displayed at the Venice Biennale and in a 
train station in Torino, Italy, was a prototype stool that exploits 
the passive act of sitting to generate power. The weight of the body 
on the seat causes a flywheel to spin, which powers a dynamo that, in 
turn, lights four LEDs.
"People tended to be delighted by sitting on the stool and would get 
up and down repeatedly," recalls Graham.

Other people have developed piezo-electric (mechanical-to-electrical) 
surfaces in the past, but the Crowd Farm has the potential to 
redefine urban space by adding a sense of fluidity and encouraging 
people to activate spaces with their movement.

"Our intention was to think of it not as a high-tech mat that would 
be laid down somewhere, but to really integrate it into a new sort of 
building system," Graham says.

The Crowd Farm floor is composed of standard parts that are easily 
replicated but it is expensive to produce at this stage, they said. 
"Only through experimentation - which can be expensive - do 
technologies become practical," Graham says.

Graham and Juscyzk rely on bicycles, rather than trains or buses, for 
their commute to MIT. But, both students were impressed enough by 
recent experiences in large crowds - for Graham, the 2003 New York 
City blackout; for Juscyzk, Boston's World Cup celebration in City 
Hall Plaza - to start work on the Farm.

The students were inspired as well by an "ingenious little device by 
Thomas Edison. When visitors came to his house, they passed through a 
turnstile that pumped water into his holding tank," says Graham. In 
addition, they were guided by their advisor, Associate Professor J. 
Meejin Yoon, who helped them take their proposal from the power-stool 
to the Crowd Farm.