High-Tech Backpack Lightens Your Load and Charges Your Phone

Ultralight backpackers can achieve pack weights of less than 10lbs, but that requires expensive gear and some serious sacrifices that most aren’t willing to make. A more typical pack weight is something in the range of 25-40lbs and can reach 20 percent of the wearer’s bodyweight. That is a lot of weight to carry for dozens of miles across rough terrain and it is absolutely imperative that your pack is properly fitted, loaded, and adjusted. But even then, a heavy pack can feel very cumbersome. That’s why an international team of researchers have developed a backpack that can make a load feel 20 percent lighter while also charging small devices.

The backpack technology cannot actually reduce the weight of a load, of course — that would be physically impossible. Instead, it uses a complex elastomer suspension system to make a load feel lighter than it really is. The idea here is to keep the inertia of the load from having such a strong effect on the wearer. Imagine the difference between wearing a heavy backpack while you’re standing still compared to when you’re jumping up and down. The elastomer suspension system makes the load “float” on your backpack like the springs and shock absorbers on your car, which eases the strain on your back and shoulders as you take each step. Experienced backpackers know that similar concepts have been integrated into backpacks for a long time, but this is far more advanced thanks to a system of pulleys that dramatically increase the working length of the elastic suspension cords.

In addition to making your load feel lighter, the backpack also has the ability to harvest energy from your movement in order to power small devices or even charge your smartphone. It does so by using triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) that are able to convert mechanical energy into usable electricity. As the load slides up and down on the backpack’s frame while the wearer walks, the TENGs produce a very small electric current. This doesn’t produce enough power to do anything serious, but it can light some LEDs, run a few sensors, or give your smartphone a little bit of juice. Backpackers would find this capability to be particularly useful in the wilderness where power outlets are hard to come by. A day’s trek could be enough to keep your GPS receiver topped off or to charge an LED lamp for the night. A quick glance at the backpack is enough to make it obvious that this is nowhere close to being ready for the market, but the underlying technology could find its way into consumer backpacks in the future.