Energy-Generating Fabric Set To Power Battery-Free Wearables

An anonymous reader writes A team of researchers in Korea and Australia have developed a flexible fabric which generates power from human movement – a breakthrough which could replace batteries in future wearable devices. The effect of the fabric's nanogenerators mirrors static electricity with the two fabrics repeatedly brushing against each other and stealing electrons from the one another – this exchange creates energy from the wearer's activity without the need for an external power source. During testing, the researchers demonstrated the nanogenerator powering a number of devices such as LEDs, a liquid crystal display, as well as a keyless car entry system embedded in a nanogenerator 'power suit'.

Comments

Re:The only problems being

[aNonnyMouseCowered]

And here I thought that static electricity was the friend of sensitive electronics.

Re:Swimwear

[jklovanc]

Lets spend hundreds of dollars on expensive fabric that that may be ruined in the wash instead of using a 49 cent battery, Lol. I guess fabric softener is out of the question.

Re:The only problems being

[Paradise Pete]

Just give us a better battery.

I'm surprised no one ever thought of this. What are they thinking?? I mean, it seems so obvious.

So a coat it silly, but what about...?

[gilgongo]

While I agree that putting the fabric inside a coat demonstrates a naive view of human factors (you can't wash the coat, you have to wear it all the time, etc.), I wonder if this might simply be the first idea they had after developing the invention?

Fabric generating power from movement would seem to have applications in other places: sails on boats; flags flying on buildings; tarpaulins on trucks, maybe quite a few others if the fabric is sufficiently robust enough.

Re:So a coat it silly, but what about...?

[gl4ss]

if it was that efficient, they would have chosen a windmill demonstrator.

it's not that efficient, so they chose this demonstrator. if it provided enough power to charge a phone, they would have had that on the demonstrator. all their uses could be done with a tiny solar cell.

First thing I thought of...

[fyngyrz]

How about flags? It's windy as heck here, and putting up a flag is about as easy as anything ever gets. You get a lot of motion, at least in this neck of the woods.