DARPA To Turn Humans Into Batteries

DARPA is working on a project that will convert energy from the human body to power a variety of military gadgets. From the article: "Obviously, our bodies generate heat — thermal energy. They also produce vibrations when we move — kinetic energy. Both forms of energy can be converted into electricity. Anantha Chandrakasan, an MIT electrical engineering professor, who is working on the problem with a former student named Yogesh Ramadass, says the challenge is to harvest adequate amounts of power from the body and then efficiently direct it to the device that needs it." If I remember the movie correctly, this didn't turn out so well for the humans.

Question

[xednieht]

Why is mankind so obsessed with harvesting energy from the rarest sources in the universe? Why not start with the most abundant sources?

Re:Question

[meringuoid]

Think wearables. Batteries are heavy and inefficient and need periodic access to a power supply to recharge; that limits how long you can go on using your various toys, especially if you're way out in the wilderness on some mission or other. If you can draw power directly from the wearer's body, then you can greatly improve the usefulness of his electronic augmentations.

Re:Matrix Jokes ...

[MistrBlank]

Have you gone back and watched the first matrix movie? It's really not much better than the other 2 movies. That said, I don't see why people pan the other two so bad.

If anything, people miss that in the first movie, Neo realizes he's destined for greatness. The second movie ends on a such a terrible down note and neo realizes he's not destined for any kind of greatness, he's just doomed to a system. And in the final movie we have the crescendo

If you pan the Matrix series... you really can't call yourself a fan of the original Star Wars trilogy, the acting in either trilogy isn't any better than one another and the story follows equivocally the same theme if not the SAME STORY (even down to the three fronted assault at the end). The only difference is in this trilogy Luke dies.

Re:Wrong direction for soldiers?

[david.emery]

Maybe they won't have to carry all of the extra batteries, which will help.

Seriously*, you've hit a significant advantage. The normal 'basic load' of batteries is 30 days, from what I remember, and carrying those batteries around, particularly in Ranger/light infantry/Special Ops units is a tremendous drag. Whatever technique gets used, though, has to account for the fact that light infantry soldiers spend a lot of time being still (because what moves can be seen, and what can be seen will be shot...), so either you need some technique to store the power or you need something that can generate some amount of power when the soldier is not moving.

* for humor on this topic, see my other post ;-)

TANSTAAFL

[sabt-pestnu]

...There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Energy taken out of the system has to come from somewhere. Some energy, sure, can be "harvested" without effort on part of the human host - temperature differences, compression energy while walking, the sort of thing that can't be avoided.

Any power generation on a significant scale, though, will cause the person generating it effort. Like, say, a bicycle generator, or winding up an alarm clock. Even something passive, like putting an induction generator (think: "shake powered flashlight") on your belt will add to the weight you carry, the inertia you have to overcome. More effort on your part.