Smart Clothing, Smart Idea?

You need about 2000 calories for your daily needs (you can convert it to Joules, H.P. watts or whatever you wish), that is what you consume almost in its entirety (unless you tend to fatten); then, I wander how much is really left for energizing gadgets?.

Yahlasit

The power that can be generated in this way is only suitable for very low power applications. The real interest is in powering implanted medical devices, but really that is a limited market and I don't see that changing ever. Unless of course we are stupid enough to let big brother pharma "bug" everyone for continuous medical monitoring. Hey I guess it would stop charging when you're dead. Then you'd disappear!

I doubt this will ever be a consumer product for ipods or phones.

One thing about conventional batteries, they don't start to smell funny after the tenth time they are recharged...

How many times can they hype a non-reality?

This is a technology waiting for an application. So far the ideas and suggestions to make use of it are limited by imagination but, in time, I'm sure that there will be engineers who use it in many ingenious ways beyond the obvious (e.g. clothing). Ingenuity - it's what we engineers do!

DaveD

About 2000 (kilo)calories keeps you alive. But most of us don't sit on the couch 24/7, and many of us exercise merely for fitness. A world-class endurance athlete can generate about 300 Watts, while the typical fit person can manage a steady 200W for a time (very rough numbers not derived from any serious study). Depending on how much of that can be harnessed, mainly during training, because in competition you don't want any unnecessary friction, we could power some useful things.

Nike might be investigating some cool gimmicky workout gear based on this tech already.

Yeah, like shoes with blinky lights in the heels.