A closer look
Batteries are heavy, highly toxic, and notoriously terrible at holding a charge. University of Washington researchers decided to abandon them entirely by turning ambient background radiation into an infinite power supply. We are constantly surrounded by stray radio frequency signals from TV towers and cellular networks. The researchers engineered a communication device that passively harvests the microscopic electricity from these invisible waves. Instead of generating its own radio signal to transmit data—which takes massive power—it simply acts like a digital mirror, actively reflecting and modifying the existing ambient signals to broadcast voice data. It is essentially hitchhiking on the world’s existing telecommunications infrastructure.
