The Quick Answer: Smart pavement technology uses kinetic energy floors, most notably Pavegen's electromagnetic tiles, to convert the mechanical force of pedestrian footsteps into electricity and real-time data. Installed in high-footfall locations like airports, transit hubs, and shopping streets, smart pavements generate clean off-grid energy while simultaneously capturing anonymised pedestrian analytics. The technology is now active in over 40 countries.
Every city has a resource it has never thought to tap: the footsteps of its citizens.
In busy urban spaces, a transit hub, a shopping street, an airport terminal, hundreds of thousands of steps happen every single day. Each one is a brief burst of mechanical energy. And until recently, every single one was wasted, absorbed silently by the floor and converted to nothing but a tiny amount of heat.
Smart pavement technology changes that equation. By deploying kinetic energy floors in the right locations, cities can harvest energy from pedestrian movement, generate real-time urban analytics, and create the kind of interactive, participatory public space that makes sustainability feel tangible to the people living in it.
Here is what smart pavements are, how they work, and why the world's most forward-thinking cities are deploying them now.
Smart pavement technology refers to flooring systems embedded with sensors and energy-generating mechanisms that respond to pedestrian movement. The most advanced systems, exemplified by Pavegen's kinetic tiles, do two things simultaneously: generate electricity from footfall through electromagnetic induction and capture anonymised pedestrian data through integrated wireless sensors.
The result is a floor that is not passive infrastructure but an active contributor to a city's energy and data ecosystem. Every person who walks across it is, in a small but measurable way, powering the city around them and informing the decisions of the people who manage it.
When a person steps on a Pavegen tile, the surface compresses downward by up to 10mm. This motion drives internal electromagnetic generators, copper coils and magnets, that convert the mechanical movement into electrical current. Each step produces 3–5 watt-seconds of electricity, enough to power an LED streetlight for approximately 30 seconds.
Energy can be used immediately, to power lighting, digital displays, or interactive installations, or stored in a battery for use at off-peak times. Across a high-footfall location, the continuous generation adds up. The Paris Marathon, where Schneider Electric partnered with Pavegen to install tiles along part of the course, generated 4.7 kilowatt-hours from the runners alone, enough to power a five-watt LED bulb for 40 days. (See what Pavegen can power here.)
Critically, this is not the whole value of smart flooring technology. The data layer is equally significant.
Urban planners have always wanted to understand how people move through cities. Traditional approaches (manual counting, camera surveys, mobile signal analysis) are expensive, episodic, or carry significant privacy concerns. Smart pavement technology offers a continuous, real-time, privacy-safe alternative.
Pavegen tiles transmit anonymous, aggregated data wirelessly, capturing footfall volume, dwell time, peak movement periods, and flow direction across a space. This data feeds directly into smart city dashboards, giving planners, transport authorities, and property managers a live picture of pedestrian behaviour, without cameras, without facial recognition, and without capturing any personally identifiable information.
The applications are significant. Retailers can understand which areas of a shopping centre attract the most dwell time. Transport operators can identify pinch points in passenger flow before they become safety hazards. Urban planners can evaluate how changes to a public space, new seating, different signage, altered pedestrian routes, actually affect the way people use it. The floor becomes an intelligence layer running beneath the city.
In one of the world's most densely populated cities, getting outside to exercise is not always straightforward. At The Quayside in Hong Kong, Pavegen solved that problem in a way no building had attempted before: by installing the world's first indoor running track built on kinetic energy tiles.
Residents of the building can run laps and see their energy generation displayed on a live data screen powered entirely by their own footsteps. The track transforms a routine fitness activity into an active contribution to the building's sustainability goals, giving the community around it a visible, participatory stake in what clean energy actually feels like. It is a model for how smart buildings can make sustainability personal.
When Polish convenience giant Żabka set out to build the country's most environmentally advanced grocery store on Lewandów Street in Warsaw, it brought together around 20 different sustainable innovations under one roof: quantum dot window technology, an ECOmat, an electric vehicle charging station, and a green wall. At the centre of the customer experience was a Pavegen kinetic walkway, the only element in the entire store that let shoppers physically participate in its green credentials.
Every step taken on the colourful kinetic energy tiles generates off-grid electricity that feeds directly into the store's equipment. The result is a deployment that reframes the weekly grocery shop as an act of sustainable contribution. It demonstrated, ahead of almost any other retailer in Europe, that a kinetic energy floor could function as a permanent fixture in everyday commercial infrastructure, not just a flagship installation.
Dubai Expo 2020 brought Pavegen to a global audience. Across the two-year event, Pavegen installations engaged millions of visitors, demonstrating that the technology can operate at international exhibition scale and across climatic conditions very different from its London origins.
One of Pavegen's most emblematic deployments was a football pitch in Lagos, Nigeria, delivered in partnership with Shell. The energy generated by children playing football powered floodlights on the pitch, providing off-grid lighting and safety to a community that previously could not use the space after dark. It was a demonstration that smart pavement technology is not only relevant to wealthy cities with sophisticated infrastructure budgets, but to any community where people move and gather.
Three converging trends are driving rapid growth in smart pavement deployment across the world's cities.
Cities and governments are under increasing pressure to demonstrate concrete progress toward carbon reduction targets. Smart pavements offer something that most sustainability investments cannot: an immediately visible, publicly engaging demonstration of renewable energy generation. The floors are not invisible infrastructure, they invite participation and make the energy transition tangible to ordinary people.
The shift to people-centred urban design, such as pedestrianised zones, 15-minute city concepts, active travel infrastructure, has created urgent demand for high-quality pedestrian analytics. Smart pavements generate that data continuously and passively, without the privacy concerns associated with camera-based surveillance. For cities that have committed to data-driven urban management, that combination is compelling.
Pavegen has been deployed in over 40 countries across more than a decade of real-world installations. The engineering questions around durability, weather resistance, and data transmission are answered. What once looked like a promising experiment is now a proven infrastructure technology and the procurement community is beginning to treat it accordingly.
The business case for smart pavement technology rests on multiple value streams: energy generation, data analytics, and the commercial value of more engaging, higher-dwell-time public spaces. The ROI framework will vary by location and deployment scale; Pavegen works with city teams to model this from feasibility through to deployment.
Yes. Pavegen tiles are engineered for both indoor and outdoor use and have been deployed in climates ranging from the tropics to the Gulf. The electromagnetic system is sealed, and the recycled rubber surface provides weatherproofing and grip across conditions.
Pavegen collects anonymised, aggregated movement data. No personal identifiers, biometric data, or individual tracking takes place unless specifically requested, authorised, and built into the system. Data is transmitted wirelessly and is accessible to the building or city operator via a secure dashboard. Real-time energy data is often displayed publicly to increase awareness of sustainability measures and improve engagement with the space. The system is designed to be fully compliant with GDPR and equivalent data protection frameworks.
Considering smart pavement technology for your city, transit hub, or commercial development? Pavegen works with urban planners, architects, and property developers from initial feasibility assessment through to installation and ongoing analytics support.