Floor

Remember back when basketball courts had hardwood floors? You're right, most still do, although some may soon be switching over to the eye-popping dynamic-display ASB GlassFloor. Its first permanent installation was announced earlier this week.

The idea of using human movement to generate electricity is something we've seen applied to many areas, and scientists have now developed a highly efficient form of wooden flooring that leverages this technology to power a lamp with footsteps.

Engineers at MIT’s CSAIL have developed a smart carpet that can accurately estimate a person’s movements or body pose without needing cameras. The system could be useful for exercise feedback, monitoring falls, or tracking for VR and gaming.

There are untold energy sources all around us, if we can just figure out how to tap into them. Swiss researchers have now demonstrated an environmentally friendly way to make spongy wood flooring that can generate electricity with every step.

A new process developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison)​ could see homes powered by footsteps on energy-harvesting flooring for around the same price as conventional flooring.

UK tech firm Pavegen has been harvesting pedestrian power with floor tiles that convert the kinetic energy of footsteps into electricity since 2009. Today, the firm has launched a new version of the tiles and, in addition to being more efficient, they are able to capture footfall data.

The GlassFloor flooring from German company ASB uses LEDs embedded in the floor of multi-purpose sporting courts to display the line markings for different sports at the flick of a switch.

Dutch company LEDSSPORTS looks set to solve one the major problems associated with the plethora of sports played on multi-purpose courts - LED court markings that can be turned on and off depending on the sport being played.

The Mint Automatic Floor Cleaner is a robotic cleaner designed to both dry and wet clean hard surface floors.

May 24, 2005 The company that brought the world’s first practical, affordable and viable Robotic Floorvac to market is set to show a next-generation model that

Few would argue with kicking back in front of the TV while the floor around you is being automatically cleaned without any human intervention. The iRobot Corpor