Powering next-generation Internet of Things
The Internet of Things (IoT) will revolutionize the way in which we interact with the world around us.
Think of the way health care, automated production lines, smart city devices work: Sensors of temperature, presence, traffic density measure data and communicate to a control unit, whose “artificial intelligence” takes actions in an autonomous way. Monitoring and decision-making without human intervention define the all-round, new world of the IoT.
IoT is an universe in fast expansion: we expect 27 billion devices to be installed by 2025.
The search for new energy sources
For unwired power solutions, batteries are nowadays the dominant energy source. However batteries are bulky, environmentally unfriendly and have limited capacity: How many times a day do you charge your smartphone?
We need new compact, low-cost and lightweight energy sources.
Heat and light are ubiquitous and very abundant in nature but, as most of the green energies, are intermittent. This means that, in order to become key factors in the future “IoT society”, we need to find a way to accumulate such energy and to make it available when needed.
Our devices will be able to “harvest” energy from heat and light and to “store” it for its use as power supply for IoT nodes at the same time. All of this being as small as your fingertip.