Apologies for the light blogging, I have some sort of upper-respiratory infection that makes my existence a lot less enjoyable.
Last week I broached upon the idea that in the next decade, the greatest innovations will occur in the area of human-machine integration, and I went to far as to suggest that the invention of an implantable USB port driven by ink-jet printed nerves would be the single greatest leap forward in technology in the last 20 years. I also mentioned that "vaporware", i.e. technology that sounds promising but is really only a dream inside someone's head (and likely will remain so) is prevalent in this area of research perhaps more than any other.
But back to reality. One problem with integrating machine and human is that the human side of that equation comes with a built-in power supply but the machine side doesn't. If you have a GPS-enabled, infrared-imaging computer mounted on your head that beams a map in real-time to a contact lens on your eye, how do you provide power to that system? The quick answer is "batteries", but that's not the most elegant. What would be better is if the machine components could generate their own renewable power.
And here's (possibly) how to do it: TAE points the reader to this wikipedia article about radioisotope thermal generators, which are big, keg sized assemblies that NASA straps to deep-space satellites. These essentially work by deriving a current from the heat traveling between the hot, radioactive core of the device and the cold, space-side of the device via thermocouples.
But wait, all these thermocouples need is a heat gradient to work? Why not sew them into a person's clothing? What if the user's clothing was lined with a layer of electroactive thermocouples, utilizing the Seebeck Effect, such that the heat produced by the body during metabolic processes was in turn utilized by the thermocouples to produce a usable (though tiny) current? It's not a stretch to imagine this working.
However, the energy yield would probably be very small, and in warmer temperatures, the returns would diminish, as the temperature difference is what drives the current. So an alternative to this might be needed. Here at TAE, we've covered the herbivorous robot before (heretofore the "herbibot"). But what if it could be utilized into a backpack generator for use with the MEMS systems located within the HMI? Every time you get low on power, just feed your backpack herbibot another carrot...
I am not sure how efficient the power output is from these herbivorous generators, and frankly I am doubtful they are fantastic. But if the promises of the company developing the herbibots are even close to true, this could be a viable way to carry portable power.
And potentially you could pull paper goods out of the nearest garbage can to use as fuel.
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