Harvesting opportunities

Citation

Loughlin, C. (2010), "Harvesting opportunities", Sensor Review, Vol. 30 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/sr.2010.08730caa.001

Harvesting opportunities

Article Type: Editorial From: Sensor Review, Volume 30, Issue 3

For this issue, our theme is energy harvesting – a rapidly growing area of new technology that aims to do away with batteries and power cables for sensor devices. Normally, wireless transmission of the sensor data comes into the equation and so the energy source needs to power not just the sensor, but also a microcontroller and a radio transmitter.

Progress in this area has been greatly aided not just by our improving ability to extract energy from various sources such as vibration, heat and light, but also by the constantly reducing power requirements of semiconductor and wireless technologies.

The potential impact of such technology is vast – the last ten years has seen an explosion of wireless systems with our computer printers and other IT peripherals becoming available to anyone within range with security clearance. It will surely not be long before simple household devices such as light switches transform the press of the finger into a radio transmitted command to a “home controller”. The savings in copper alone will be enormous, which is just as well given the current cost of the raw material and the mountains that are being mined for its production.

One of the areas that has always been of great fascination to me is the combination of various forms of sensor data to provide whole new opportunities for data gathering and interpretation. For a good example of this we need look no further than the iPhone 3Gs. This includes amongst other things a three-axis compass, GPS position sensing, temperature measurement (the touch screen works on heat), and a microphone. It is amazing what can be achieved by combining these data sources with a few “apps”. For example, my hobby is sailing and I get to have quite a bit of time to look at the stars. Since the iPhone knows from the GPS where I am, a clever “app” can work out the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field at my location and from this it can work out the orientation of the iPhone, which is jolly handy because it then means that I can hold it up to the night sky and an astro app will tell me what I am looking at.

If I need reminding that it is getting a bit blowy then a wind speed app analyses the signal created by air passing over the microphone and tells me it is gusting up to a force 8. If I decide to retreat below and am particularly enjoying a glass of wine, then the camera can be used by a bar code app to read the barcode on the bottle and tell me more about its provenance and more importantly where I can order some more and the best prices available.

All this is a wonderful example of how the combination of various sensor data and (most importantly) human ingenuity can create new opportunities for knowledge and entertainment.

Clive Loughlin