Technology

The article writer's didn't even read the paper they are reporting...

This is power-over-skin. Ie: power transmitted from one device to another via human skin. It's not harvesting or generating energy from the human body.

The research paper, published by Andy Kong, Daehwa Kim, and Chris Harrison from Carnegie Mellon University, notes that the human body is particularly efficient at generating 40 MHz RF energy.

No. It doesn't. At all....

Page 1 of the research paper PDF:

We call our technique Power-over-Skin Prior work has found that the human body is particularly efficient at conducting 40 MHz RF, while largely confining transmitted power to the body

The article is very misleading. It says

The research paper…notes that the human body is particularly efficient at generating 40 MHz RF energy. Tapping into that through a 'worn receiver' provides power without using any invasive means.

But I read much of the pdf linked at the bottom of that link, and there’s nothing about the human body generating energy at 40MHz. The trick is that skin is pretty effective (sort of) at conducting energy at that frequency, so the authors hooked up a power transmitter worn on the forearm, 5 or 15cm away from a receiver on the hand.

This isn’t about powering anything by body energy, it’s about strapping a battery-powered transmitter somewhere on your body and then having another device pick it up when strapped somewhere else on your body. No thanks.

Oh and it’s actually pretty inefficient and won’t provide much usable energy.

Tom's hardware is declining in quality steadily. Suggesting VR and phones is a joke based on a 2mW budget. Yes you can do computation but not what a layman thinks it would do based on the examples they give.

Wasn’t machines using humans as batteries a plot point in the matrix? Why are people trying so hard to make these sci-fi nightmares a thing? 😆