The ever-shrinking size of electronics and sensors has allowed wearables to help us quantify more and more about ourselves in smaller and smaller packages, but one major constraint is the size of the battery you can fit inside. What if you could remotely power a wearable device instead?
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University were able to develop a power transmitter that lets power flow over human skin to remote devices over distances as far a head-to-toe. The human body can efficiently transmit 40 MHz RF energy along the skin and keeps this energy confined around the body and through clothing, as the effect is capacitive.
The researchers were able to develop several proof-of-concept devices including “a Bluetooth
ring with a joystick, a stick-and-forget medical patch which logs data, and a sun-exposure patch with a screen — demonstrating user input, displays, sensing, and wireless communication.” As the researchers state in the paper, this could open up some really interesting new wearable applications that weren’t possible previously because of power constraints.
If you’re ready to dive into the world of wearables, how about this hackable smart ring or a wearable that rides rails?
It’s almost a little sad to see the Personal Area Network (PAN) concept from the 90’s devolve into a “mere” power-delivery system. The original idea had been to use this technology to link worn components in a bodywide network for data transfer and remote sensor deployment (on the body). The fun came in when you made skin-to-skin contact (via handshaking, for example) and two PANs linked up and exchanged credentials. File transfers and contact exchanges would be fast and fairly effortless.
No, I do not know if research was done to determine if more intimate skin-on-skin contact could be used to transfer malicious files. It seems trivially possible, but who the hell keeps their wearable tech on while canoodling?
It seems like you have confused PAN with BAN or Body Area Network because PAN is all about devices you’re carrying.
I guess those are later definitions, refined. I remember PAN described exactly as Bear Naff put it. IIRC that description predated USB and certainly Bluetooth.
Not sure about wearable devices, but now I’m thinking of a cyberpunk world where cybernetic-targeted viruses are transmitted sexually.
Funny, 40 MHz was historically used for diathermy treatment: Deliberately transmitting RF energy into the body to heat parts up.
They could have been kinder to the spectrum and used the 27.12 MHz or 13.56 MHz or 6.78 MHz ISM frequencies that are actually intended for such use.
Yes, there’s also a 40.7 MHz ISM allocation.
Well, I may be overly cautious, but transmitting RF over the body constantly worries me.
And I also wonder how such an application would be implemented without privacy sucking as the primary funding.
likely not an issue, i mean as long as you dont put the RG58 from your ham radio in a place it doesnt belong lol, really these kind of things are only dangerous when their is a significant differential present i.e. electron flow direction. thing is, there is just better ways to passively power on body sensors, for example, a self winding watch, or potentially id imagine a piezoelectric generator powered by your heartbeat, or even just thermoelectrics could be used, we are full of so much warm goo that is just giving away all that power for free, like somewhere resting at almost 250 btu’s
Note to self: never ever search for a “burned penis” again.
Seems a trivial usage and however low the risk may be, this seems ripe for secondary issues.
Might not cause cancer, but might influence how and where it propagates to.
Or it might not.
No, that’s not how non-ionizing radiation works. You’re constantly bathed in far more RF energy than this, and it doesn’t matter how much of it you get, anything below UV is physically only capable of heating you up. If you can’t feel it, it’s not enough to matter.
this a good source from microchip
https://www.rfidjournal.com/news/microchip-markets-rfid-technology-that-transmits-via-the-human-body/75554/
Two frecuency low and High
https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/Appnotes/00001391C.pdf
I wonder if the power extends to the eyes? Could be used to power something that makes use of contact lenses, maybe?
As an expert in this area with a self-conferred doctorate from teh interwebs, I need to inform everyone that this is going to cause cancer. You’re welcome.
Well, you know the saying;
“For every Doctorate, there’s an equal and opposite Doctorate! “
I am suprised i am the only one concerned about static electricity and magnetization. Like you know how those electronics gather all the dust of the room?..