Researchers Create A Wearable Microgrid That Is Powered By Your Sweat
- 3 years ago
In 2018, Seismic launched its apparal line powered by discreet robotics to support the body’s core and function like an extra set of muscles. Their Seismic suit gives 30 watts of power to each hip and lower back to support sitting, standing, lifting and other activities. The California-based startup has $23M in funding.
A paper published in Nature Communications on March 9, 2020, highlighted a new wearable microgrid that would potentially allow the human body to power small gadgets.
Funded by UC San Diego Center for Wearable Sensors and the National Research Foundation of Korea, nano engineers at the University of California San Diego, have created a wearable microgrid screen printed onto clothing. The wearable microgrid has sweat-powered biofuel cells, motion-powered devices (triboelectric generators) and energy-storing supercapacitors. Each component is screen printed onto a shirt and configured to optimize the amount of energy collected.
In a statement, Lu Yin, a nanoengineering Ph.D. student at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and co-first author of the paper, said that the team applied the microgrid concept to create wearable systems that are powered sustainably reliably and independently.
“Just like a city microgrid integrates a variety of local, renewable power sources like wind and solar, a wearable microgrid integrates devices that locally harvest energy from different parts of the body, like sweat and movement, while containing energy storage,” said Yin.
Suorce: Forbes
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