Chicago Inno (April 15) -- What If Footsteps Could Provide Power to a Stadium? That's the idea behind Touch Light, a startup from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, whose tech can generate power from the impact of a footstep. Their product, the Power Pad, is placed below carpets or floorboards, and harnesses energy from the force of a footstep using proprietary compounds that work similarly to piezoelectric materials (more on that in a second).