A battery to feed robots from the heat of the human body

Of all the submundos on the Internet, my favorite is that of youtubers who dedicate months to an engineering project of doubtful profitability for the simple fact of trying.

The Matrix. There is a whole generation of adults that in 1999 saw ‘Matrix’ in the cinema. The Matrix, the concept of engineering from which the science fiction film of the Wachowski sisters starts, is a machine that uses humans as batteries to extract from their body the energy that feeds the robots.

With the AI ​​advancing at runaway, it does not seem like a project that we want to materialize precisely now. But would it work? To verify it, someone is needed with the motivation and the determination of carrying out a project or too useful, or too profitable. Exact: You need a youtuber.

Basically Homeless’s human battery. This is the name of the Nicka Zetta channel, the youtuber and inventor that concerns us. Inspired by matrix, Zetta designed a special suit that takes advantage of the heat generated by the human body to produce electricity.

The premise is simple: the side of the suit that is in contact with the skin is heated when the person is active, because his body generates heat, while the other side, exposed to the cold air of the environment, remains fresh. That temperature difference can be used to produce electricity.

How it works. To convert the temperature difference into electricity, it is enough to use a thermoelectric generator, a device with two conductive materials, one on the hot side and one on the cold side, which generate a potential difference (that is, an electrical voltage) to take advantage of The Seebeck effect: electrons move from the hot to cold, creating a current flow (that is, electricity).

The problem is that the human body does not generate too much heat, nor does it at a specific point, so many thermoelectric generators were needed to achieve a non -despicable amount of energy.

The limitations. During the suit tests, Nick managed to generate electricity peaks that soon down because the temperature difference with the outer side of the suit was matched. To avoid this problem, he devised a way of producing “heat pulses”: great temperature differences in short periods that allowed him to obtain more electricity.

The body is heated when exercising, but also (not trying at home) when drinking alcohol or ingesting spicy meals with a lot of capsaicin. If at the same time the outer air is cold, the temperature difference is important.

Feeding a robot with the suit. Although the invention failed to generate enough energy to load a mobile, it did produce electricity in small quantities that were enough to move a small robot on a table.

Maybe it is not the matrix that science fiction fans imagined, but remember that the film’s robots could not obtain electricity from the sun with photovoltaic cells, which would be much more efficient, because humans had darkened the sky in an attempt to end the energy of the robots.

Images | Basically Homeless, Warner Bros.