The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) has created quite the piece of technology a few days ago. They’ve made a small, flexible, and light thermoelectric generator patch that could easily power your wearable technology someday. The aim is to almost completely eliminate batteries from your device, just using one of these patches.
Byung Jin Cho, a research lead at KAIST, came up with the idea to create a glass fabric-based thermoelectric generator that’s light and flexible enough to wear on a device. The patches were created to be worn on the skin. It will eventually be able to sustain much more energy for a longer period of time than having a bulky battery that doesn’t really generate power at all.
Now, there are other thermoelectric patches out there, but none that are this flexible with no side effects from bending. So, there is hope for this technology to make it to our wearables someday.
Think of devices like Google Glass that have a small battery, with most people only getting a day out of each charge. This technology could completely eliminate most of the bulk, while offering all-day use. We most likely won’t see this technology on any wearables for quite a while, but there’s nothing wrong with daydreaming a bit. Think of your smartwatch being only as thick as the display and band. That would be nice.
Source: KAIST, Via: Gigaom