Not so much the dawn as the mid-morning of wearable tech is upon us with smartwatches and smartglasses being unveiled by pretty much every big tech manufacturer and smart clothing is the next concept that people are looking at arranging for the masses.
One of the groups that are already looking ahead to what wearable technology will achieve in the future are researchers at the University of Central Florida, who have got designs on turning you into a walking battery pack. Well, your clothes, anyway.
The researchers have developed technology which will allow wires and threads to store energy by covering wires in nano-sized ‘whiskers’ that become electrodes, given the correct treatment. This turns the sheath into a super capacitor that can store energy without hampering any electrical transmissions through them.
The process has a present-day use for electronics that need cabling to function, but future applications of the technology can allow for fabrics and other materials to store electrical energy in conjunction with a solar cell and some specially-created fibers in your clothing. That means your jacket, the example used by the researchers would have the ability to charge electronics with the electricity stored in their futuristic capacitors.
The tech that would allow for clothing/battery packs is still in development and is still subject to failure, sadly. Nanotech professor Jayan Thomas said “We take it step by step. I love getting to the lab everyday, and seeing what we can come up with next. Sometimes things don’t work out, but even those failures teach us a lot of things.”
Source: Engadget