Message from Director
Energy Harvesting is not just Renewable Energy Technology
Conventional technologies developed by human being utilize only part of enormous energy to operate various systems stably, and the other energy is thrown away as waste heat. It is a steam engine, an electronic circuit, and centralized power generation technologies. There may be no examples of systems that utilize energy leaving nothing left over to fully support social infrastructures, of course, as long as not contrary to the second law of thermodynamics.
The energy harvesting for forthcoming IoT society is, therefore, a big challenge, because it requires fundamental reconsideration of the way of past technologies after the Industrial Revolution.
Can we really realize the IoT system by utilizing such weak and unstable energies in the environment? What kind of future society can be realized by energy harvesting?
At the research institute for Ambientorocnis, we tackle the big questions.
Takanobu Watanabe, Director
Research Institute for Ambientronics