Many times we have talked about smartwatches, their functions, which from generation to generation become more and more intelligent but at the same time bring the small battery contained inside the body to its knees. Well, in the future we may no longer have these problems, turning to a technology of the past, in fact you will know that there are automatic watches on the market that can work without a battery. In practice, the operation is guaranteed by a rotor which, with the movement of the wrist, winds the spring of the watch, giving the kinetic force to allow it to work at any time.
However, as trivial as it may seem, this technology has not yet been possible to migrate it into the field of smartwatches today due to the high consumption of the screen and without a battery, it is quite difficult for one of these watches to work. But things are about to change, because your body will perform the recharging function.
On the smartwatches of the future, your body will recharge the battery
A research group from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) is working on a new mechanism to obtain energy from human movement and thus charge wearable devices. The principle of kinetic energy recovery is therefore used, generating a two-unit system, the main one that deals with energy capture and a second part that will generate current.
The catch would be a miniature metal pulley that will swing mimicking the movement you make with your wrist. In this way, it will convert the captured motion into electrical energy through the generator, multiplying it by 10 and then sending it to the battery.
The special thing is the small size of the system, which is very difficult to develop and make efficient. Another wonderful peculiarity is that the system is based on a number of components less than 10 but above all you will never have to recharge your smartwatch, because you will be the one to act as perennial energy for your wrist device.
Some might think why then this system was not developed before and the answer lies in the fact that in reality the movement of the human body generates very little energy, even in carrying out intense sports activities, therefore only with modern technology it was possible to develop an electric generator capable of amplifying the energy collected by bodily movement, now able to power and keep active the increasingly defined and resolute displays of smartwatches.
And do you want to know more positive news? The production cost of this ingenious system is only 11 euros, but we still have to wait some time before we see it appear on a large scale production, in industrial terms.
Something similar, but much simpler, had already been presented in 2017, with the Sequent Super Charger product, of which you can see the image and video teaser in the article you are reading, but the technology offered was of the hybrid type. It was in fact a smartwatch with an analog dial that could offer smart functions such as pedometer, calorie control and activity monitoring.
So the controversy of the absence of the charger in the iPhone 12 package was an excuse for us to discover that the phone is recharged by shaking it? Seriously, this new technology could undoubtedly have a positive impact on the environment as well, as smartwatch manufacturers should stop producing cables and components related to the "old standard" charge, thus eliminating production costs and plastic materials. , as well as benefiting from the design of the smartwatches themselves, which will therefore be more “smooth”.
We can't wait for this to become reality even if the fear is that innovation that does not make anyone rich, unfortunately, is never supported. What do you think of it?
