Smartwatches are increasingly able to monitor the vital signs of health, including tracking sleep, but the devices are often disconnected from a user’s body overnight in order to be charged at the bedside.
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have used the natural electrical conductivity of human skin to try and solve this problem.
“In this device we have an electrode that couples to the human body, which you could think of as the red wire, if you’re thinking of a traditional battery with a pair of red and black wires,” said computing engineer Jeremy Gummeson.
The conventional black wire is established between two metal plates that are embedded on the wearable device and an instrumented everyday object, which becomes coupled (or virtually connected) via the surrounding environment when the frequency of the energy carrier signal is sufficiently high – in the hundreds of megahertz (MHz) range.
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