Caltech Developed a Sweat-Powered E-Skin Patch to Monitor Your Health
A Caltech team has devised a perspiration-powered integrated electronic skin patch that can monitor health and even act as an HMI.
The success of Fitbit watches and other wearable fitness trackers have proven that there is a lot of demand for technology that can help us monitor our health and activity. They can aid us in quantifying how much physical activity we get, and can even motivate us to get more exercise. But fitness trackers aren’t exactly comfortable, and it certainly isn’t convenient to add yet another device to your life that needs to be recharged every day. That’s why researchers from Caltech have developed an electronic skin patch that can monitor your health and is powered by your own sweat.
This e-skin patch is capable of monitoring many of the same stats as a typical fitness tracker, including your heart rate. But it can also collect data about your body that a Fitbit or Apple Watch can’t. For example, it can monitor your blood sugar levels and metabolic byproducts that can provide insight into your health. The e-skin patch itself uses a flexible rubber substrate, so it can be worn like a large adhesive bandage. That should ensure that it is much more comfortable to wear for long periods of time — especially when you’re playing sports, running, or lifting weights.
The sensors gather some of the data about your body through perspiration, which is also how it generates energy. Your sweat contains lactate, which is released as a metabolic byproduct by your muscles. The e-skin patch contains carbon nanotubes that wick the sweat to biofuel cells, which are able to convert the lactate into a small amount of electricity. They can provide enough electricity to power the patch’s sensors, as well as a Bluetooth transmitter that can be used to send the data to your smartphone or a nearby computer. That is far more convenient than similar NFC (near-field communication) systems that need to be very close to the reader in order to transmit data.
If this wearable technology can be brought to market, it would revolutionize the fitness tracking industry and could potentially serve as a human-machine interface for robotic assistance as described in the researchers' paper.