Wireless sensors Battery-free devices float in the wind like dandelion seeds, can monitor how temperature, humidity or other environmental
Because the devices have electronics on board, it’s challenging to make the whole system as light as an actual dandelion seed. The first step was to develop a shape that would allow the system to take its time falling to the ground so that it could be tossed around by a breeze. The researchers tested 75 designs to determine what would lead to the smallest “terminal velocity,” or the maximum speed a device would have as it fell through the air.
Without a battery, however, the system can’t store a charge, which means that after the sun goes down, the sensors stop working. And then when the sun comes up the next morning, the system needs a bit of energy to get started. “Then we’ve got this little circuit that will measure how much energy we’ve stored up and, once the sun is up and there is more energy coming in, it will trigger the rest of the system to turn on because it senses that it’s above some threshold,” Iyer said.
“This is mimicking biology, where variation is actually a feature, rather than a bug,” said co-author, a UW professor of biology. “Plants can’t guarantee that where they grew up this year is going to be good next year, so they have some seeds that can travel farther away to hedge their bets.”
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