5 ms·
Wireless system can power devices inside the body
- JumpCrisscross 8y agoHow much energy could a device extract from blood sugar?
- rtkwe 8y agoThe real question is can that conversion be done in an efficient enough way with materials that are safe to put inside someone and in a small enough package.
- rhcom2 8y ago"One single implanted GBFC device of 0.24 mL volume (2.4 mL for the whole implant) produced the power required to operate, using a specially designed electronic circuit to charge a capacitor, two types of electronic devices: a LED and a digital thermometer." https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01516 https://www.nature.com/articles/srep01516
- Pfhreak 8y agoI'm waiting for someone to invent the implantable chip that converts blood sugar into heat/light purely with the intention of wasting that energy. Grab enough power to monitor blood sugar, to make sure you aren't putting someone into a coma, but otherwise just try to burn an extra few hundred calories a day.
- robotrout 8y agoThat's interesting. Seems like a low tech solution would be to give blood every day. I wonder if somebody has already invented the blood donation diet.
- simcop2387 8y agoProblem with that is that we don't replenish it fast enough for that to work. Maybe with plasma donations but I'm not sure there either.
- cleong 8y agoIt would be an enormously complex device, most of the sugar we consume gets converted into fat as we quickly cap out our "energy blocks".
- booleandilemma 8y agoWhy waste this energy? Couldn’t they devise a way to mine bitcoin with it? :)
- delecti 8y agoOh god, just what the world's food distribution problems need.
- pazimzadeh 8y agoGood idea, but I’m guessing you’d have fever as a side effect ;)
- agumonkey 8y agoorgasic
- eeZah7Ux 8y agoThen you need to radiate heat somewhere. If you heat up the blood the body will spend less energy keeping warm leading to no benefit. If you generate a lot of heat... it goes really bad.
- ClassyJacket 8y agoEasy, simply install a venting port in the patient.
- oh_sigh 8y agoThe first patient should be a congressman then, because they already have a hole they blow hot air out of.
- craftyguy 8y agoAlternatively (and arguably much less complex and much cheaper): 1) eat less, 2) exercise
- oh_sigh 8y agoYou're thinking too fancy - with our technology today, we could install a bypass valve at the pyloric sphincter that just dumps chyme into a stoma appliance/bag.
- excalibur 8y agoPlenty of nefarious applications for this. The range alone blows away existing RFID designs, which will make it the preferred "chipping" technology for surveillance states everywhere.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoThere are positive uses. I can see this being useful for monitoring health in animals raised for food in addition to the medical applications the article mentioned. That said, the potential for abuse is limited by what society will tolerate. We tolerate tracking and alcohol monitoring bracelets for people who drive drunk. If we tolerate tracking implants for sex offenders on parole or something I'm sure it'll filter down routine probation sentences eventually.
- sametmax 8y agoWe tolerate tracking devices with camera, microphones and banking history in our pocket. We even pay for it. So i wouldn't count of the public wisdom on this. Or anything really.
- jgroszko 8y agoOr fast food restaurants embedding tracking devices in their food... That'll be fun having to review privacy policies at every restaurant you eat at.
- chemicalcrux 8y agoFinally, a use case for smart toilets! Imagine getting a bonus on your Taco Bell™ Rewards Card™ for not...expelling any Taco Cabana chips.
- pietroglyph 8y agoRight now the preferred "chipping" technology is your smart phone.
- 8y ago
- apocalypstyx 8y agoTexhnolyze here we come.
- smolder 8y agoCan it power tumors? More seriously, though, nanotech or relatively small implantables/injectables powered by radio or induction could do a lot for medicine... If anyone could afford it.
- trhway 8y ago>The implants are powered by radio frequency waves, which can safely pass through human tissues. In tests in animals why animals? couldn't the researchers just swallow that "prototype about the size of a grain of rice" themselves and/or get several paid volunteers?
- CamelCaseName 8y agoAnimals are the first step because testing in humans is more expensive. These devices will likely have to be tested in humans before commercialization.
- fao_ 8y ago> why animals? couldn't the researchers just swallow that "prototype about the size of a grain of rice" themselves and/or get several paid volunteers? Insurance. I assume it's easier to get insurance for human testing if you've shown safety in animals first.
- dear 8y agoBecause animals have no say and they don't have to pay the animals. Once it's done the animals will just be euthanized.
- s0rce 8y agoBecause if it turned out to be dangerous it has been determined that the animals being hurt/killed is better than that happening to human test subjects.
- maxander 8y agoContrary to the other answers to this question, I suspect the real reason is that the prototype is expensive, and way easier to recover from a lab animal’s poo than the researcher’s.
- NKosmatos 8y agoInteresting and for sure there are numerous applications for such devices, but they didn’t mention anything about security and possible interferences. Sounds very promising but scary at the same time.
- ghostbrainalpha 8y agoI want to power my earbuds without ever removing them. If they can do this I would be the first human tester. I'd also love to start my car, without having to remember where i left my keys.
- ffk 8y agoThe main thing I got from the MIT article is this: "This system relies on an array of antennas that emit radio waves of slightly different frequencies. As the radio waves travel, they overlap and combine in different ways." This is known as constructive interference, pretty nifty to see it used in this context. The range has been increased from 10 cm to 1 meter since the paper I co-authored on this subject. Impressive! These kinds of applications have also been a long time coming. With IoT devices and NFC readers looming around the corner, I think it is likely that we will see some pretty innovative medical inventions. Likewise, as mentioned by NKosmatos, we need to take the security aspect very seriously. Some of these NFC devices are programmable, and should defend against attacks that could lead to events such as withholding life-saving medicine or misreporting biometrics. For reference, check out this paper I co-authored: Suitability of NFC for Medical Device Communication and Power Delivery (2007) https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4454171/ https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/4454171/ And if you're interested in an early paper about RFID-delivered viruses, check out this by Tanenbaum et al.: http://www.rfidvirus.org/papers/percom.06.pdf http://www.rfidvirus.org/papers/percom.06.pdf
- darkmighty 8y agoIsn't this description flawed though? Waves of different frequencies are independent in power. Thus they don't interfere (when time-averaged) -- at all. Zero. (this is because signals of different frequencies are orthogonal in the time-average integral of product sense) What creates interference is difference is phase among waves of the exact same frequency. It's odd that the paper author is making such basic EM theory mistake, and I wonder what the actual device construction is like. (since it cannot work the way he describes at steady state) Maybe he's interpreting phase modulation as frequency modulation? Of course at steady state all frequencies would be the same, making this a weird/incorrect interpretation I think.
- ffk 8y agoMy understanding is all frequencies interfere with all other frequencies. When averaged, the total power is probably not affected, but the power at any given point at a small enough time interval should be noticeable. But then, I'm not an antenna designer, I may have something fundamentally wrong in my understanding. :)
- ThomPete 8y agoOne of the first "promises" of nanotechnology I ever read about was that you could create batteries so small that just calling your cellphone would charge them I wonder if that is fundamentally the same idea.
- fouc 8y agoRadio waves are used to power cochlear implants. There is a chip & receiver unit that is inserted under the skin on the head, with electrodes that go into the cochlea. Externally there is an antenna that is held on the head next to the skin, using a magnet to hold it in place. Radio waves are sent across the skin to power the chip and control the electrodes.
- mclightning 8y agoHow does the device come out when you need it to?