October 18, 2007 by Marco Zennaro | 1 Comment
Sensors Without Batteries
Wireless battery-powered sensors that monitor bridges and report changes (that may lead to failure) are easy to install, but it is unwieldy to provide power for the sensors. Each bridge needs at least several sensors, many installed in hard-to-access locations. Replacing millions of batteries could become a problem, adding to the expense of maintaining the bridges. The Clarkson researchers have found a way around this problem and have “completely eliminated battery from the equation”. More information here and here.
This is an intersting result. As far as I know there are indeed quite few really commercial products scavenging energy from the environment (except some niche products), despite the mess of scientific papers. The impression about scavenging, reading papers, is that we are at the edge of an adoption in industry, and might become a reality in few time. On the one hand vibrations are on the one hand one of the the most “easy”, compared to others (except sunlight?) “more” complex (like chemical reactions).On the other hand working systems are not yet so common.
Dimensions are still problematics, as clearly one can see from above videos. But some energy scavenging are intrinsic mechanical , and less prone to miniaturization.