Skip to main content

Research breakthrough brings body-heat-powered wearables a step closer

research breakthrough brings body heat powered wearables a step closer smartwatch
Image used with permission by copyright holder

One of the greatest challenges facing tech companies as they seek to establish themselves in the fledgling wearable tech market is creating devices with a decent battery life while at the same time keeping them compact and light.

Up to now, many manufacturers have been touting devices that spend much of their time in sleep mode to prolong battery life, and while improvements have certainly been made with conventional battery technology over recent years, groundbreaking research carried out by a team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) means we could be on the verge of a revolutionary change in the way we power our wearable tech.

Although the idea of generating power from body heat is nothing new, the KAIST research team, headed by electrical engineering professor Byung Jin Cho, appears to have brought the concept one step closer to reality with the development of a patch-like ‘glass fabric’ thermoelectric (TE) generator that rests on a person’s skin, converting their body heat into electricity.

According to Phys.org, KAIST’s creation is of particular interest as it improves on current TE generators in two ways. Existing organic-based TE generators, for example, are flexible but have a disappointing power output, while inorganic-based TE generators have better performance but are rigid and bulky. KAIST’s work, however, has produced a product that’s not only light and flexible, but also minimizes thermal energy loss while maximizing power output.

kaist 2
KAIST’s light and flexible glass-fabric TE generator. Image used with permission by copyright holder

“For our case, the glass fabric itself serves as the upper and lower substrates of a TE generator, keeping the inorganic TE materials in between,” Byung Jin Cho explained. “This is quite a revolutionary approach to design a generator. In so doing, we were able to significantly reduce the weight of our generator, which is an essential element for wearable electronics.”

While the team clearly sees a future for the technology in wearables, it’s likely to be a while before we see it incorporated into our body-based gadgets, meaning that for now at least we’ll have to continue keeping a watchful eye on those fast-disappearing battery bars.

For a more detailed look at how the team developed its TE, check out Phys.org’s article here.

[Image: Alexey Boldin / Shutterstock]

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
This AI cloned my voice using just three minutes of audio
acapela group voice cloning ad

There's a scene in Mission Impossible 3 that you might recall. In it, our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) tackles the movie's villain, holds him at gunpoint, and forces him to read a bizarre series of sentences aloud.

"The pleasure of Busby's company is what I most enjoy," he reluctantly reads. "He put a tack on Miss Yancy's chair, and she called him a horrible boy. At the end of the month, he was flinging two kittens across the width of the room ..."

Read more
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more