- Revolutionary design aims to heat the person not the building
- Wristify works by monitoring temperature before sending warm or cold pulses to the skin to heat or cool the entire body
- Four engineering students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology behind the competition-winning invention
By Lizzie Parry
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With energy bills soaring and no sign of prices coming down one team of scientists in America may have come up with the answer - heat the person not the building.
Inspired by a desire to reduce energy consumption a team of four engineering students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) flipped the age-hold worry of heating your home on its head.
Focusing on the innovative idea of cooling and heating people rather than entire buildings, the team developed a thermoelectric bracelet.
Innovative: A team of scientists at MIT have developed a new wrist watch to help regulate body temperate. The aim is to solve the problem of soaring energy bills, heating the person rather than the building
The idea was borne out of the concept that heating or cooling parts of your body can help influence how hot or cold we feel in general.
A cool flannel placed on your head can sooth a fiery temperature while a pair of handwarmers can help skiers and hikers warm up.
The invention, dubbed Wristify, takes advantage of this, working by monitoring air and skin temperature, and sends tailored pulses of hot or cold waveforms to the wrist to help maintain a comfortable temperature.
HOW WRISTIFY WORKS
The wrist watch can be can be powered for up to eight hours by a lithium polymer battery.
The 'watch' part of the prototype consists of the team's custom copper-alloy-based heat sink - a component that lowers a device's temperature by dissipating heat.
Attached is an automated control system that manages the intensity and duration of the thermal pulses, delivered to the heat sink.
Integrated thermometers also measure external and body temperature to adjust accordingly.
'Buildings right now use an incredible amount of energy just in space heating and cooling, said Sam Shames, a materials science and engineering student who co-invented the Wristify technology.
'In fact, all together this makes up 16.5 percent of all US primary energy consumption.
'We wanted to reduce that number, while maintaining individual thermal comfort.
'We found the best way to do it was local heating and cooling of parts of the body.'
The team has estimated that if the device stops one building from varying in temperature by one degree Celsius, it will save around 100 kilowatt-hours per month.
It comes as four of the big six energy suppliers in the UK have already hiked their bills this year.
ScottishPower bills are going up by 9 per cent, npower announced a 10.4 per cent price hike, British Gas a 9.2 per cent rise and Scottish & Southern Energy an 8.2 per cent increase.
It means the average cost of keeping our homes warm has reached around 610 annually - up from 360 in 2008, the Independent revealed.
Wristify: The device works by monitoring body temperature and then regulating it by delivering warm or cool pulses to the skin
The Wristify team took home the first prize at this year's MADMEC, MIT's annual materials-science design competition, receiving funding to create a working prototype.
The annual competition, now in its seventh year, is run by MIT's Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), and is sponsored by Saint Gobain, BP, and Dow Chemical.
The contest's theme this year was 'materials science solutions for sustainability'.
Michael Tarkanian, a lecturer in DMSE who runs MADMEC said while some teams may further develop their products, taking them to market, the primary aim is to get students involved in the design and prototype process.
First prize: The team behind Wristify won first place in the MIT's annual MADMEC competition, receiving funding to develop their prototype
He said: 'The goal is to allow students to get their hands dirty, working in the labs to design and build functional prototypes.
'It gives them an opportunity to put their classroom knowledge to work, solving problems related to energy, habitat, and sustainability.'
In developing their 15 prototypes, before landing the final product, the team discovered human skin is very sensitive to minute, rapid changes in temperature, which affect the whole body.
They discovered they needed to heat or cool any body part - in this case a wrist - at a rate of at least 0.1C per second in order to make the entire body feel several degrees warmer or cooler.
The final product resembles a wrist watch and can be powered for up to eight hours by a lithium polymer battery.
The 'watch' part of the prototype consists of the team's custom copper-alloy-based heat sink - a component that lowers a device's temperature by dissipating heat.
Attached is an automated control system that manages the intensity and duration of the thermal pulses delivered to the heat sink.
Integrated thermometers also measure external and body temperature to adjust accordingly.
'What we developed is a wearable, wrist-based technology that leverages human sensitivity, can detect and perfect rates of change, and can maintain overall thermal comfort while reducing the need to heat and cool buildings,' added Mr Shames.
With their prize money, the team, also made up of graduates Mike Gibson and David Cohen-Tanugi and post doctorate student Matt Smith, plans to further develop the prototype.
vecten, medway, United Kingdom, moments ago
This isn't new to motorcyclists, who already wear battery heated underwear but there's no fun in breathing in mould spores from an unheated atmosphere.