A team of researchers from the University of Utah has and Penn State’s Materials Research Institute have developed a wearable energy harvesting device that could generate energy from the swing of an arm while walking or jogging. The device, about the size of a wristwatch, produces enough power to run a personal health monitoring system.
“The devices we make using our optimized materials run somewhere between 5 and 50 times better than anything else that’s been reported,” said Susan Trolier-McKinstry, the Steward S. Flaschen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering, Penn State
Energy harvesting devices are in high demand to power the millions of devices that make up the internet of things (IOT). By providing continuous power to a rechargeable battery or supercapacitor, energy harvesters can reduce the labor cost of changing out batteries when they fail and keep dead batteries out of landfills. Read more…