Cyber shirt to harness your energy
By Luke McKinney
Only a true geek would go walking and think "Look at all this energy I’m wasting". Maybe it’s because they stereotypically have less energy to spend before shortness of breath sets in. Whatever the inspiration, a new product in development by CSIRO (Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) could harness that energy to mean you never run out of batteries again.
The key to the shirt, piezoelectric components, are nothing new. The piezoelectric effect (whereby some materials generate a voltage in response to mechanical stress and vice-versa) has been understood since the late nineteenth century, and are now used in everything from loudspeakers to laser shutters. The advances that make wearable device feasible are recent advances in miniaturisation and flexible electronics, which could allow the necessary wiring to create energy-generating clothing without making you look like an extra from Star Trek.
The idea of creating a perpetual motion machine by hooking one of these shirts up to a Wii is exciting, but we might be waiting a while yet. The researchers confess that there are still a couple of problems to solve including bringing the weight down to a manageable level and waterproofing the shirt. Those are not small problems for clothing. If you’re allowing things with those properties to qualify, a desktop computer is just as close to being effective apparel.
But where there’s a will there’s a way, and where there are military applications there are significantly better funded ways. There are obvious applications for combat uniforms: many modern warfare devices require electrical power, and it’s been scientifically proven that people being shot at can move a tremendous amount. CSIRO have announced that the Australian Department of Defense has awarded them $4.4 million to get this cyber-suit working.
War, what is it good for? Funding.
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