Autonomous robots and intelligent manufacturing, as well as the history of human colonisation of the planet were among topics discussed on Wednesday night.
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The University of Wollongong Big Ideas Festival aims to be an opportunity for the wider community to explore the research coming out of Wollongong.
Showcasing the university’s ground-breaking research, the festival afforded 11 UOW professors the chance to share their “big idea” related to their field of research.
It featured guest speaker Professor Tim Flannery, one of the world’s most prominent environmentalists and the 2007 Australian of the Year.
Another speaker was Professor Jun Chen from UOW’s ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science and Intelligent Polymer Research Institute. His topic was “Wearable tech – turning body heat into electricity”.
He leads a team of researchers seeking to harvest and make use of a natural power source, body heat.
Prof Chen’s presentation discussed the “possibilities if we can power wearable electronics just through the harvesting of our body heat”.
Prof Chen said thermal energy has been used and harvested, for example, in solar heat and geothermal energy.
“But we also have a body heat that is not widely used, and not many people are knowing about that, that we actually can harvest our body heat.
“As an adult, even doing nothing, we are actually through the thermal heat energy exchanging with our environment about 50-100 watts per day,” he said. “This is energy that is never being used and harvested."
Prof Chen said just a few milliwatts converted from body heat is powerful enough for small medical devices, like heart rate monitors and blood-pressure sensors, not to mention watches, which might need more power than a few milliwatts.
“I want to explain to people what body heat means, and how can we use body heat, just to use the temperature difference compared with our body heat temperature and the environmental temperature.
“As long as we have a temperature difference compared with the surrounding environment ... For example, if today is 20 degrees, and our body is about 34 or 35 degrees at skin temperature, we can actually harvest the difference between these temperatures.
“This will harvest the thermal energies, which will be power enough to power a small, wearable elecronic device."
Prof Chen said another interesting aspect was “we can actually power it by our happiness”.
“That’s because when we're happier, our body temperature is going up," he said.
“That means we have more body heat energy that we can use and be harvested. If we’re very upset, our body temperature is going down. So potentially we can be powered by our happiness.
“And when we’re active we can harvest our body heat too, because our skin temperature is going up.
“These are all energies that we can harvest.”
In addition to 11 ten-minute talks, there were eight interactive research stalls from key UOW research areas for guests to explore.
READ MORE: UOW Big Ideas Festival returns
