All forecasts indicate an amazing amount of sensors by the end of this decade. The range forecasted is quite wide, from a few tens of billions up to a thousand billion. Obviously, such a range tells us that it is not a forecast but an assumption of big growth. The actual number will depend on how much the cost of each sensor will decrease, how much (how little..) is the cost of embedding the sensor in the environment and in objects, how communications will be managed and how easy it will be to power them.

We are seeing progress made in each of these areas, at a pace that would indicate that higher forecast might be closer to the point.

One area where we are seeing great progress is the one of power budget: on the one hand electronics is requiring less and less power, down from mW to microW and now on to nW. At the same time we see increase in the capability to harvest energy from the environment. What is known as “scavenging”.

Researchers at the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University have developed a thermoelectric device, Power Felt, that exploit the difference of temperature on two surfaces to create an electrical current, thus transforming heat energy into electrical energy.

As shown in the figure on the left, the material is composed of three different layers, staked into a multiple fabric. Each layer consists of specific nano-polymer (red and green in the figure) separated by an insulating film. The difference in temperature on the two surfaces of the Power Felt creates a stretch in the nano polymer layers and this creates the conversion of heath into electrical energy (very similar to the conversion of mechanical energy into electrical power through the piezoelectric effect).

Now, just imagine ourselves. Our body keeps dissipating heat, hence the temperature of our skin is higher then the one of the surrounding air (or at the Equator it may be the other way around…). Now stick a square centimeter of Power Felt to your skin and you get enough power to feed a bio sensor.

Applications can be many and depending on the expected thermal difference you may create different sort of Power Felt (with a different number of layers) thus producing a variety of (micro) electrical power output.

I am pretty sure we will be seeing a growing variety of scavenging in the coming years and subtly we will see a transformation of our environment, more and more in the direction of becoming aware.

I just posted a news on a smart technology to convert part of your walking energy into electrical on generating up to 20 W. The advance of electronics makes now possible to create tiny chips with very very low energy requirements, in the order of nW (a billionth of the energy provided by your walking shoes).

Microcantilever can turn ambient vibrations into electrical power

To power this chip completely different approaches can be used and this is crucial for the all area of ambient sensors.

A recent news published by Technology Review is discussing exactly this sort of technology.

This technology is being developed by a start up, MicroGen Systems based in Ithaca, NY, and is based on an array of tiny silicon cantilevers, shown in the lower part of the picture, that are clustered in a chip.

They pick up vibrations in the environment and transform these vibrations into al electrical current, sufficient to power wireless sensors, thus getting rid of the need to have a battery, something that is clearly impractical in many situations. What you still need is an accumulator to store the energy produced.

The amount of energy depends on the amount of vibrations. As an example, a chip inserted in a tyre can generate 200 micro watts.

There are several other competing technologies for scavenging, the harvesting of unused energy available in the surrounding, and it is likely that depending on the situation different technologies will be used.

We are going to see more and more of these micro generators adopted as the number of sensors increases. The estimate of 50 billion sensors in the second part of this decade can only be met if suitable power generation becomes available.

Interesting are also the studies to use body energy (like the glucose in the blood) to power biomedical sensors. Here again we are looking at a few micro watts of power.

For sure, the world is getting more and more responsive and along with that we will see a changing perspective in the way we look at the world. Besides, the availability of massive amount of data generated by these sensors will provide the launching platform for more services, more understanding and more way to interact with the world leading to a similar growth as the one proposed by Moore for the chip.