Power-over-Skin: Full-Body Wearables Powered by Intra-Body RF Energy (2024)
10 comments
·October 20, 2025moktonar
I don’t know if taking energy from the body is a good idea. The laws of thermodynamics will require you to compensate. Also playing with very complex systems like a human body, neglecting what the side effects might be, is unwise on a good day.
snapcaster
Isn't it just exercise? Unclear what the concern would be despite in general agreeing with you on human body being hard to change without side effects
MichealCodes
Wouldn't it just burn more calories?
idiotsecant
Did you read even the first paragraph of the link? This is about using skin as a medium of power distribution to devices, not harvesting power from the human body. No hand-wringing required.
moktonar
Possibly even worse then..
wartywhoa23
The question is why.
snapcaster
It's obviously useful right? Currently I have to remove my smartwatch to charge it for a tiny example
idiotsecant
The paper answers this. It's about powering a suite of sensors and devices that can also communicate using your skin as the distribution system for power and comms. I could see the appeal in a world where many such sensors and devices might exist on a single body.
ck2
We're approaching the point where someone will put together every form of energy harvest, solar, kinetic, temperature, air pressure (from wind, etc) and just store it in a super-capacitor for whatever you are wearing/holding, watch, phone etc.
Garmin already has solar on many watches to extend battery and the Kinefox is already doing kinetic on animal tracking
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?downl...
Morpheus : "The human body generates more bioelectricity than a 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTUs of body heat. Combined with a form of fusion, the machines have found all the energy they would ever need."