Imagine a world where the smart watch on your wrist never ran out of charge, because it used your sweat to power itself.
It sounds like science fiction but researchers have figured out how to engineer a bacterial biofilm to be able to produce continuous electricity from perspiration.
They can harvest energy in evaporation and convert it to electricity which could revolutionise wearable electronic devices from personal medical sensors to electronics.
Wearable sensors are ubiquitous thanks to wireless technology that enables a person’s glucose concentrations, blood pressure, heart rate, and activity levels to be transmitted seamlessly from sensor to smartphone for further analysis.
Most wireless sensors today communicate via embedded Bluetooth chips that are themselves powered by small batteries. But these conventional chips and power sources will likely be too bulky for next-generation sensors, which are taking on smaller, thinner, more flexible forms.
Now MIT engineers have devised a new kind of wearable sensor that communicates wirelessly without requiring onboard chips or batteries. Their design, detailed in the journal Science, opens a path toward chip-free wireless sensors.
Capacitors are energy storage devices—consisting of two electrodes and an electrolyte—that are capable of rapid charging and discharging because of charge adsorption and desorption properties at the electrode-electrolyte interface. Because capacitors’ energy storage does not involve chemical reactions, their storage capacity is lower than that of lithium-ion batteries, but they are useful for power leveling for renewable energy that requires repeated charging at high currents, regenerative braking energy for trains and electric or hybrid cars, as well as instantaneous voltage drop compensation devices that prevent equipment failure due to lightning strikes. They are also expected to be used to store energy for wearable devices in the near future.
Most capacitors use a liquid electrolyte with a low boiling point, which can only be used at temperatures below 80℃. Ceramic capacitors that use solid inorganic materials as a dielectric can be used at temperatures above 80℃, but their storage capacity is much lower than liquid electrolyte capacitors, which limits their use to electronic circuits.
To increase the energy storage of capacitors, it is necessary to have a large contact area at the interface between the electrode and the electrolyte. Making a large contact area is difficult using solid electrolytes; so, the creation of a capacitor with high storage capacity that can also operate at high temperatures has been desired for a long time.
Flexible electronics have enabled the design of sensors, actuators, microfluidics and electronics on flexible, conformal and/or stretchable sublayers for wearable, implantable or ingestible applications. However, these devices have very different mechanical and biological properties when compared to human tissue and thus cannot be integrated with the human body.
A team of researchers at Texas A&M University has developed a new class of biomaterial inks that mimic native characteristics of highly conductive human tissue, much like skin, which are essential for the ink to be used in 3D printing.
This biomaterial ink leverages a new class of 2D nanomaterials known as molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). The thin-layered structure of MoS2 contains defect centers to make it chemically active and, combined with modified gelatin to obtain a flexible hydrogel, comparable to the structure of Jell-O.
This new invention is highly scalable since its raw materials are commercially available and easy to access.
A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) College of Design and Engineering (CDE) has developed a self-charging electricity generation (MEG) device that generates electricity from air moisture, according to a press release by the institution.
Imagine being able to generate electricity by harnessing moisture in the air around you with just everyday items like sea salt and a piece of fabric, or even powering everyday electronics with a non-toxic battery that is as thin as paper. A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) College of Design and Engineering (CDE) has developed a new moisture-driven electricity generation (MEG) device made of a thin layer of fabric — about 0.3 millimetres (mm) in thickness — sea salt, carbon ink, and a special water-absorbing gel.
The concept of MEG devices is built upon the ability of different materials to generate electricity from the interaction with moisture in the air. This area has been receiving growing interest due to its potential for a wide range of real-world applications, including self-powered devices such as wearable electronics like health monitors, electronic skin sensors, and information storage devices.
Imagine being able to generate electricity by harnessing moisture in the air around you with just everyday items like sea salt and a piece of fabric, or even powering everyday electronics with a non-toxic battery that is as thin as paper. A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) College of Design and Engineering (CDE) has developed a new moisture-driven electricity generation (MEG) device made of a thin layer of fabric—about 0.3 millimeters (mm) in thickness—sea salt, carbon ink, and a special water-absorbing gel.
The concept of MEG devices is built upon the ability of different materials to generate electricity from the interaction with moisture in the air. This area has been receiving growing interest due to its potential for a wide range of real-world applications, including self-powered devices such as wearable electronics like health monitors, electronic skin sensors, and information storage devices.
Key challenges of current MEG technologies include water saturation of the device when exposed to ambient humidity and unsatisfactory electrical performance. Thus, the electricity generated by conventional MEG devices is insufficient to power electrical devices and is also not sustainable.
Water is the most essential resource for life, for both humans and the crops we consume. Around the world, agriculture accounts for 70% of all freshwater use.
I study computers and information technology in the Purdue Polytechnic Institute and direct Purdue’s Environmental Networking Technology (ENT) Laboratory, where we tackle sustainability and environmental challenges with interdisciplinary research into the Agricultural Internet of Things, or Ag-IoT.
The Internet of Things is a network of objects equipped with sensors so they can receive and transmit data via the internet. Examples include wearable fitness devices, smart home thermostats and self-driving cars.
A team of researchers in the Faculty of Engineering of The University of Hong Kong (HKU) has developed a coin-sized system that can read weak electrochemical signals and can be used for personalized health monitoring and the measurement of such conditions as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and mental health. The discovery was featured on the cover of Analytical Chemistry.
The PERfECT System—an acronym for Personalized Electronic Reader for Electrochemical Transistors—is the world’s smallest system of its kind, measuring 1.5 cm x 1.5 cm x 0.2 cm and weighing only 0.4 gram. It is easily wearable, for instance integrated with a smartwatch or as a patch, to allow for continuous monitoring of biosignals such as glucose levels and antibody concentrations in blood and even sweat.
“Our wearable system is tiny, soft and imperceptible to wearers, and it can do continuous monitoring of our body condition. These features mean it has the potential to revolutionize health care technology,” said Dr. Shiming Zhang of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, who leads the HKU WISE (wearable, intelligent and soft electronics) Research Group to develop the system.
Agility Robotics recently raised $150 million USD in part from Amazon to further develop its humanoid robot called “Digit” for logistics automation. New wearable, bendable, stretchable neuromorphic AI chip monitors health in real time. New machine learning model from MIT does college level math at a human level.
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0:00 Humanoid Robot Worker For Amazon Automation.
3:00 New Wearable AI Chip.
5:08 New Machine Learning Math Model.
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Wearable human-machine interface devices, HMIs, can be used to control machines, computers, music players, and other systems. A challenge for conventional HMIs is the presence of sweat on human skin.
In Applied Physics Reviews, scientists at UCLA describe their development of a type of HMI that is stretchable, inexpensive, and waterproof. The device is based on a soft magnetoelastic sensor array that converts mechanical pressure from the press of a finger into an electrical signal.
The device involves two main components. The first component is a layer that translates mechanical movement to a magnetic response. It consists of a set of micromagnets in a porous silicone matrix that can convert the gentle fingertip pressure into a magnetic field variation.
