Future technology: 22 ideas about to change our world
Future technology: 22 ideas about to change our world Floating farms, brain wave passwords, and coffee-powered cars are just some of the incredible inventions and innovations that will shape our futur e 1 Sweat powered smartwatches Engineers at the University of Glasgow have developed a new type of flexible supercapacitor , which stores energy, replacing the electrolytes found in conventional batteries with sweat. It can be fully charged with as little as 20 microlitres of fluid and is robust enough to survive 4,000 cycles of the types of flexes and bends it might encounter in use. The device works by coating polyester cellulose cloth in a thin layer of a polymer, which acts as the supercapacitor’s electrode. As the cloth absorbs its wearer’s sweat, the positive and negative ions in the sweat interact with the polymer’s surface, creating an electrochemical reaction which generates energy. “Conventional batteries are cheaper and more plentiful than ever before but they are often bu...