News Intel taps wine barrel to power microprocessors

So does this mean we will be able to power embedded system using the power generated by the human body ? Maybe as controllers for prosthetic limbs, or long term monitoring of illnesses. Will your body be the battery of the future ?

 

An apple working as a battery for a small radio. Who hasn't done this when he was young

Anyways. Making a SoC that draws as litle power as a small radio is awesome for sure.

 

There is some significant work toward driving low power, power supplies with human metabolism. Glucose goes in, power is generated, waste is put right back in to the blood stream to be cleaned out. Same byproducts that your own cells would produce.

I think think the power levels are anything to right home about, microwatts at best...but Intel is thinking along the lines of microwatts. Might allow things like implantable hearing aid or cochlear implants that never need batteries.

I doubt it is the sort of thing that would ever get beyond the level of miliwatts of power, but could be enough to run basic microcontrollers and sensors. Prosthetic limbs probably will never be able to be powered directly from your own body, but some of the electronics in them might be able to be, even if the motors need their own power supply. I can think of a lot of uses there where you can have a sense of touch and heat/cold all the time, even sleeping as the sensors and controllers in the prosthetic arm/leg are being powered off your body, but you have to charge the limb every day (swap batteries?) for the motors. Or maybe even when sleeping the limb could slowly and partially recharge its batteries from your body (human body is capable of pumping out several hundred watts through our normal metabolism, if you could draw even as much power as a USB2.0 port of 2.5w, you probably could do some significant recharging overnight and extend batteries during the day).

 

Not using that technique, unless you want to poison yourself. Besides the anode (i think, can never remember which one) is consumed and would need replacing (like a normal non-rechargeable cell). The wine is just being used as an electrolyte (blood would work fine, but we kinda need that as it is without a whole lot of extra meal ions floating around in it).

 

Not yet you cant, but biofuel cells are being used in research, and Sony developed a Bio Battery in 2007 that put out 50 mW. So its only a matter of time for the matrix to come true