ENERGY HARVESTING MATERIALS post by Tyler Michael

Many research projects are providing novel and intelligent solutions to things such as autonomous vehicles, portable robotics, prosthetic arms, and many other things that require a power source to perform their main functions.  These projects within themselves are utilizing cutting edge techniques in terms of control, mechanisms, and materials.  The problem that these projects are running into is power, they cannot carry a large enough power source to maintain performance and function over an extended period of time, rendering them useless in terms of applicable functionality.  Current renewable energy solutions add to the bulk of these prototypes and are not reliable enough in terms of constant power generation or magnitude of power generation to be effectively implemented.  Constantly refueling and recharging is also out of the question considering autonomy and independence is a major design metric used to evaluate these designs.  So what can be done to address this?

Energy harvesting materials could be worked into the design to create a constant energy source to either power the prototype directly or recharge an onboard battery.  These materials could harvest thermal energy, kinetic energy, and energy generated from chemical interactions in a nonintrusive way to propel these project forward to applicable use.  In their current state, these materials provided a little bit of power for low energy applications so they could not be applied at this grand of a scale just yet.  But why not invest in the refinement of these materials to enhance their energy output to input ratios so they could be integrated on a larger scale?  Revolutionary discoveries in the materials side of things could be coupled with progress in large scale solar and wind energy solutions to provide a more effective solution to our dependence on depleting energy sources.  Current energy harvesting materials include things like piezoelectric materials that produce a voltage based on deformation and thermoelectric generators which produce voltage based on thermal gradients.  These materials are new solutions to an old problem and I think they should be investigated in our labs with the same enthusiasm as we examine the attractive robotic solutions that need these materials for independent operation.