Human generators: Our bodies could soon be charging our gadgets
Scientists have developed tiny chips which could generate enough electricity to power portable electronics by harnessing the human body’s movements.
Georgia Tech Photo by Gary Meek, Dr. Zhong Lin Wang holds a sample nanowire array
Findings presented at the National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society revealed that tiny nanogenerator chips, more powerful than their predecessors, have allowed scientists to start considering real world applications. Utilizing nanotechnology these chips can translate the smallest movements such as the pinch of a finger into usable power. In a short few years these nanogenerators could have us powering our gadgets with nothing more than our daily routine.
While research into nanogenerator technology in itself is not new, a team of scientists lead by Dr. Zhong Lin Wang found a way to multiply the power output of these devices by thousands of times. “This development represents a milestone toward producing portable electronics that can be powered by body movements without the use of batteries or electrical outlets,” says Dr. Wang a scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology.
These nanogenerators are actually small flexible chips comprised of tiny nanowires. These wires can generate an electrical current when flexed or subjected to pressure. As an example, embedding these nanogenerators in the soles of one’s shoes could power personal electronic devices simply through the act of walking. Dr. Wang and his team aren’t about to rest on their laurels either, “If we can sustain the rate of improvement, the nanogenerator may find a broad range of other applications that require more power.“
Considering that the diameter of these nanowires is so small that 500 of the wires can fit inside the width of a single human hair and that they are non-toxic, there’s nothing stopping them from being used inside the human body, the possibilities are vast and exciting. Personally, I’m tired of batteries dying, overheating, needing charging or replacing, I’d gladly allow a few nanogenerators to stowaway on my person if it meant saying good-bye to battery hassles, what about you?
[via Geek]
Faster! More! (have to plug in the netbook during conference breaks #fail)
Although these nanochips may be non-toxic, i wouldnt say that they pose no health risks. When you have something in your body that generates electricity, how do you know that the extra amount of electricity generated by these chips won’t harm organs or tissue in your body.
Point well taken!!
No one said you have to become a human android. They said you can implant it in a sole of a shoe. How will that affect your organs?
FOR SURE;; WAHT HAPPENS TP PEOPLE THAT HAVE A PACEMAKER AND COME NEAR T THESE THINGS IT CAN AND MOST LIKELY WOULD DISTURB THE OPERATION OF THESE DEVICES THUS CAUSEING MANY TO HAVE HEART ATACKS. NOTA GOO DIDEA AT ALL JSUTR ANOTHER WAY SO THE GOVENMENT CAN TRACK YOU AND YOUR ACTIONS WE ARE BECOMING A TRACKING CANADA AND BEFORE YOU KNOW IT WE COULD BE COMMUNIST TO THE EXTENT THAT WE ARE WATCHED ALL THE TIME. DO YU WANT THAT????? I DON’T .think hard about this crap.
you mean you don’t think hard nor write very well either.
Umm I think you`re going a little far. Relax a little
Technology creates tools which can either be used for good or bad intentions. I don’t think these chips are meant to track you down, even though I completely agree with you on the fact that surveillance technology is increasingly alarming in its efficiency, AND that governments don’t openly advertise about it, even though they DEFINITELY make use of it. As for pacemakers, do any of them stop functionning when you’re near a wi-fi access point? No, even though the air around that area is filled with radio-electrical signals. Not to mention satellites, cell-phones, radio, radars.. I mean, come on.
Yes I think it will be a sure fire way of making sure we are all being watched and will not be able to do anything in private antmore.Their are far to many electric eyes watching our moves now
Cancel your Facebook, Myspace and Twitter account. If you use any other these and post what you are doing every five minutes then you’ve already bought into being watched.
The only way for ppl to not know what you are doing is remove all technology from your existance, cut up your credit cards, use cash only and move in with the hillbillies of the Ozarks. (Not intended to offend the Ozark hillbillies)
1)Read the article again.
2)Learn English grammar.
3)There is such thing as a period…….. :)
…..
They won’t do any more damage than an electric watch or a cell phone or an ipod. As for the government tracking you theory you can get therapy for that.
As a matter of fact, the “Enhanced Driver’s License” that are issued in some provinces in Canada, have a “Tracking Chip” installed into the card that looks much like the financial banking “Chip” cards! I think you should take a look into that before thinking that some people on here are “out-of-their-minds” as ANYTHING is possible when it comes to technology.
government tracking you? paranoid much…
Sally, you started off nicely with your concern about the effect of these devices on pacemakers. Unfortunately you took a left turn and drove straight into paranoiaville. Government tracking us? Conversion to communism? The government already can and does track us. Also, are you aware that the Berlin Wall has long since fallen? With the amount of information that is readily available at our fingertips, there is no way that any rational North American would consider us communist regardless of how much we are watched. Stay calm Sally and stop chopping the prozac in half.
Awesome. Finally a way to convince people to carry around my brain controlling receivers.
I don’t know. I do know that watches that wind themselves depending on body movement are a pain. you have to keep moving.
I haven’t thought about it that far! But I certainly agree with you here though!
she’s right, according to my knowledge, human body works with 1.5 volts from head to toe if we’re are generating whatever the amount of electricity…that’s a risk of malfunction on the other organs inside like heart let’s say.
When our body generates electricity there is going to be grounding it, will be giving shocks (static) regulary will it not effect our body
If you can generate energy with them in your shoes, how about expanding to say….tires for charging the new EVs, or the hulls of ships/boats, or aircraft fuselage…not now surely but in a few years who knows?
Finally someone with a thought process thats not just crap spouting off.
Very good thinking foward.
I was actually thinking about “Eco-Friendly” Electric cars being charged by the “Nano-Generator Chip” that possibly could be available in the near future as well!
good point. why jepordize our bodies when we could use technology to power the new technology.
There is no energy created; it’s simply transformed. The muscles will work harder because there will be a resistance from the chips, just as a hydro turbine impedes the flow of water. Granted, the resistance may be very faint. Given the human physical condition today, this may not be a bad thing. “Curious” wants to expand the idea to “tires for charging new EVs. I have this perpetual motion machine for sale………cheap too!
Correct me if I’m wrong but tires produce wasted energy that is dissipated as heat. You can’t create energy from nothing but you can make things more energy efficient.
tires do not produce the heat, friction does. as for creating electricity from nothing, if you installed an electric turbine in the wheel, the motion from the wheel can be used to produce electricity.now since it isn’t perpetual motion, You will always need something to make the car move in the first place until you can generate enough electricity to actually propel the car with the turbines.
Well said!
I think Kevin’s point, and frankly the point of the technology is that there are thousands of movements made by our bodies that require energy. The energy required to produce the movement is not efficiently used. The generators would let us increase the efficiency by converting some of that energy into electricity. It’s the same concept as regenerative brakes on hybrid cars, but for our bodies.
I am sure there was/is a self winding wrist watch. Tell me something new.
To Don………..the self-winding watch is to this breakthrough as the Wright Bros first plane is to the Space Shuttle!!! New enough????
Flex a wire often enough and it will break. How often will we have to replace these chips and how expensive will that be?
That’s true, but maybe they could use rubber to protect it, like the rubber-coated earphones, if you know what I mean…
Resistance is futile. We will become one with the Borg.
:)
If, “Dr. Zhong Lin Wang found a way to multiply the power output of these devices by thousands of times”, why can’t they use the same technology to multiply the output of current hydro generating stations and shut down plants that use coal and nuclear fuel?
I never thought of that before! It’s a new discovery though, so even if maybe that’ll happen in the near future, it’ll take quite some time for all of that to evolve to the new technology…!
You guys are all April Fools Smucks
Ah, no, today’s world/society as a whole is an April Fool’s Joke.
I TOTALLY agree with you here!
Touche Common Cents!
Ask him then…
Wasn’t this one of the premises of The Matrix? Humans as giant batteries?
Do you take the red pill or the blue pill ?
TAKE THE BLUE PILL… Ignorance is bliss.
that was my first thought also. Creepy, not exactly moving society into the direction which brings more balance to overly busy lives, simply another gadget that “everyone needs” like the latest iPhone or 3D tv, what’s the point its not bringing you more to life, only convenience which as far as I can see only causes more trouble and stress than what its worth.
If this technology can be used to solve bigger problems than your cell phone battery dying I might buy into it. That said, although fictional, the matrix is a good example of what we could be asking for….. as the saying goes, careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
Ho jeeze you’re right. D:
Seriously??? Just another way to @#$% up mankind. When does it end??
Read Revelation 13, it’s a part of that prophecy.
Bingo! Self powered UID Chips for the happy mark of the beast! No frickin’ thanks!
I agree, its the mark of the beast, and those that take this mark can buy and sell, but their soul is lost forever. as for the christians who do not take this mark, they will be in heaven with OUR MOST WONDERFUL LORD GOD.
BEWARE THE MARK OF THE BEAST
Your preusming mankind is not already F#%# UP?
THE MARTIX HAS YOU NEO!
ha ha – doubt
lol i mean THE MATRIX HAS YOU!
Will my penis be able to generate power from the slightest movement?
This is no April fools joke. This is the begging of the end time prophecy in which the micro chip is going to be used in our bodies to control not only the electronic devices, but to control our ever move and destroy our civil liberties. Read Revelation chapter 13 in the Bible. Dr. Lin Wang has contributed to this up and coming end time biblical prophecy that will come into effect. Right now that chip used to recharge our electronics will not control our move, but this type of technology will place mankind on the eve of it.
They will use that micro chip for the Mark of the Beast, I will resist the mark of the beast for my submission to God.
I meant this is the beginning of the end of time.
Stow the religious crap, mate; it’s just a fairy tale…
Stow the ignorance mate; you’re just a fairy…
Whatever your religious stance, recent history suggests that anything that becomes widespread public infra will contain some kind of monitoring or backdoor. For public safety or whatever.
Corporations have already implanted RFID chips in datacenter personnel to serve as access cards.
On the day of Judgement, you will for sure find out if it is just a fairytale and crap.
The really funny part about this statmement is that you are just about bound by your beliefs as Sheldon is and you both believe you are free.
Exactly!!!
Amen, brother !
HAHAH YOUR A DOUCH…………….GO HUMP YOUR BIBLE……THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GOD.
Umm.. That’s only your opinion, “douch”! Not a fact; And I wouldn’t trust your word on anything anyway. You also don’t seem to think there are such things as “you’re”, or Caps unlock!!
Civil liberties are destroyed by people, not technology.
Dude you need to get back on your meds. The whole chip in your body thing is old news as companies and important Government departments already do it to personnel (they’ve been doing it for years). People destroy freedom and liberty not technology, do you have a credit card? do you use air miles or travel miles? you clearly have a computer, don’t you realize that your IP is monitored? What I’m trying to tell you is that it’s the same thing. I personally would not be comfortable with having such a device in my body, but to think it will bring about the end of the world is just silly. What your talking about is much more complicated than this here, and if your afraid of being monitored sorry to break it to you buddy but if your part of society corporations and the government have been tracking you since birth the only difference is that over time they get better at it. I always thought it was so cool when I go to the BMW dealership and they put my key in a computer and can tell me every thing about my car (my average km driven per day, the state of my breaks and how often I change them, average temperature set in the vehicle etc.) , then I realized they know everything about how I drive my car because of Oh! No! a computer chip in the key!!! IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD!!!
It is quite silly, isn’t it? These religious fanatics seem to be constantly flogging current events as signs that the end of the world is coming. They’ve been doing this for as long as I can remember, yet we’re still here.
I can’t help but wonder how they can be so blind to their own ignorance and hypocrisy…especially when you consider how often they have been proven wrong.
Some people will believe anything, I suppose. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could just keep it to themselves though?
Amen, this has been written down thousands of years ago that we will me monitored with a mark. This is the beginning of the end.
Indeed, it was written by humans…thousands of years ago…poor, frightened creatures who were making a futile attempt to explain what they could not understand. Tread just a few more steps forward in history, and the appearance of these writings being used to control humanity enters the picture.
Yes, indeed, religion was being used to control people long before technology.
I heard about a “Micro-Chip” invention that has already been tested to add it into a patient’s brain to control their every movement, not long after the “Eco-Friendly” cars that began to bring up the hype…I think that they were both up on the MSN and/or Sympatico pages at that time as well…but a couple years ago though…so it isn’t really Dr. Zhong Lin Wang’s fault for bringing up this “new” invention though…blame it on whomever created the first “Micro-Chip”…probably the financial banking institutions who created the ever-so hyped “Micro-Chip” cards a few years back! Just whomever created the “Human Micro-Chip” idea has GOT TO BE one of the most SICK-MINDED humans that had EVER EXISTED!
All this technology is sending mankind into a tailspin towards one government to having control of the human race.
That’s the idea.
Governments are groups of individuals, Power is always given,never taken.
I think this is great, now only if they could discover a cure for cancer!!!!!
don’t you think they already have a cure for cancer…… population control, same as HIV & AIDS.
Furthermore, the body has this really neat little thing called your immune system, this system is able to detect that which is part of your body and that which is not. Those things not considered part of you are attacked, meaning if you get a chip planted inside your body and your body reacts to it, in order to keep the little chip that charges your battery you will have to take immuno-suppressive drugs for as long as you have the chip (i.e. rest of your life if you so choose)so that your body won’t attack it. And of course since the drugs can’t be specified to just say that chip, your immune system will not be functioning at capacity and you will then be susceptible to all kinds of other infections and diseases that you would normally never even know existed.
Worth it now?
Yup… well said. You got it all right.
no not well said because people have things implanted into there body all the time such as metal plates when bones break your.