Still having problems charging your phone even have a portable power bank? Well, during the last Isle of Wight Festival, Vodafone showed off an amazing wearable “Power Pocket” prototypes that are available in the form of denim shorts and even a rechargeable sleeping bags.
Power Pocket is a collaboration between the British telecommunications company and the department of electronics and computer science at the University of Southampton. Stephen Beeby, Professor of Electronic Systems at the University of Southampton said that:
We’ve been working on printed smart material since the late 1980s, But that was high-temperature stuff designed to be used on ceramics. We got into the topic of energy-harvesting in the late 1990s, and we brought the two together to make smart materials for harvesting energy.
Each smart material contains thermoelectric modules that convert temperature differences between your sweaty, gyrating behind and the surrounding air into electric voltage, a concept known in physics as the Seebeck effect.
Professor Beeby also say:
Eight hours in the sleeping bag, roughly speaking, will provide 24 minutes of talk time and 11 hours of standby time. That’s assuming the inside of the sleeping bag is 37 degrees—human body temperature.
Likewise, a full day of walking and dancing in the Power Pocket shorts will charge a smartphone for four hours.
Vodafone will be running trials of the technology throughout the summer, although they are a few details need to be tackled by Professor Beeby and his team. However “There’s lots of research still needed around making this technology hardwearing,” he explained.
Sleeping bags, for example, need to be folded up and compressed into quite a small package. These materials at the moment are flexible, but there are improvements to be made still.
Via: Vodafone
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