This Generator Uses Body Heat to Charge Wearable Devices

We sure do have a lot of gadgets nowadays. Let’s see. Your average person has a smartphone, a laptop and a tablet to start. Some people have dedicated portable video game consoles, smartwatches and weird looking glasses. That number is only going to increase as new technologies emerge, particularly in the wearable arena. So the problem then becomes, how in the heck do we power all of this stuff? If we are gone all day at work, or heaven forbid exercising or something, one or more of our gadgets are going to give up the energy ghost. We need something light and innovative to power all of our wearables on the fly. What if this potential generator also used our own body to do just that? That’s science fiction talk, right?

Not quite. A group of researchers in Korea have designed something that does just that, a lightweight and portable generator that powers up our wearable devices using our own body heat. We’ve gotta do something with all of that hot air in any event. It’s made of a thermoelectric chipset printed on glass fabric, the former accounting for the body heat solution and the latter accounting for the light weight. It’s an elegant solution to an age old(ok, a few years) problem.

Of course, this tech is still just in the developmental phase so don’t go around rubbing your sweaty hands on your gadgets. It won’t do anything. This technology is super useful, however, so it’ll pop up in some kind of consumer version eventually. In the meantime here is a video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=js3wdlgZb9k