LED sign powered by commuters

Commuters in a Japanese train station are helping to power LED boards.

Mats placed in Shibuya Station, Tokyo, have been designed to create electricity when people step on them.

Designer of the mats, Soundpower, reveals that 0.1 watts of energy is released when a commuter weighing 135-pounds treads on them for one second.

This has been harnessed to light up holiday decorations in the station and power an LED board that displays the amount of energy generated by travellers.

Yoshiaki Takuya, from the company, revealed that a large number of mats can lead to substantial amounts of energy being produced.

He told Gadget Lab: “When they are covering a large area of floor space and thousands of people are stepping or jumping on them then, we can generate significant amounts of power.”

In other news, LED boards in Tokyo have been fitted with cameras in order to calculate how many commuters look at adverts on the displays.