Pavegen

Bird St in London has undergone something of a transformation recently, going from an underused offshoot to the "world's first Smart Street." Designed to showcase the High Street of the future, it merges pollution-busting and sustainable technology with a traffic-free shopping and dining experience.

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.

A little over a year ago, Pavegen's kinetic energy-harvesting tiles were installed at a soccer pitch in Rio. The movement of players across the tiles is used to generate electricity and power the pitch's floodlights. Now, a second such pitch has been created in Lagos, Nigeria.

Getting around the streets of any busy city can be slow and frustrating. One concept for making it easier in London, however, would see pedestrians and cyclists moved below the streets. The London Underline concept proposes using the city's disused tunnels used as a network of cycle and footpaths.

Kinetic tile company Pavegen has partnered with Shell for its biggest undertaken so far – to give a run-down community soccer field in a Rio de Janeiro favela an off-grid power supply which benefits the whole community.

Pavegen Systems and Schneider Electric partnered to install energy harvesting tiles across a stretch of the course at the 2013 Paris Marathon.

Pavegen, the company behind a system which produces electricity from kinetic energy, has taken to Kickstarter in order to fund installations in two schools.

Pavegen tiles hopes to power areas high in foot traffic with their award-winning design.