BODY-POWERED WEARABLE DEVICES COMING SOON!

Sustainable energy source for wearable electronics

Wearable electronics look set to be the way of the future for many of our everyday leisure and medical devices. The real question is how will these devices be powered? Engineers at KAIST – the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology – think they may have the answer. A research team led by Professor Byung Jin Cho has come up with a new design that harnesses the body’s own heat via an ultra thin patch.

The patch consists of a glass fabric-based thermoelectric (TE) generator, which exploits the difference in temperature between the user’s skin and the surrounding air. However, the real innovation lies in the patch’s high degree of flexibility. The patch’s design allows for repeated bending without affecting its capacity to generate electricity. Professor Cho believes this technology will have further applications in large scale systems such as cars, manufacturing plants, planes and ships by recouping wasted thermal energy!