Foot-Powered Machines, a Functional Taxonomy in the Age of Sustainability

Since the Middle Ages, human-powered tools and machines have played an important role in societies. Prominent among these are pedal-powered machines, which harness the overall power from the strongest muscles in the human body. The article identifies a historical taxonomy of pedal-powered machines to provide designers with an orientation map for devising new solutions, suggesting some contexts in which today’s pedal-powered machines can re-purpose ancient mechanisms to perform an innovative function. The reduction in energy consumption, the low environmental impact, and the autonomy of the process, in fact, can represent not only a technical rediscovery of engineering, but also a new way of supporting human subsistence.