MSTextiles Forum 2018 introduced improvement of smart energy management in wearables

On June 21, 2018 the IVAM MSTextiles Forum took place at the Fraunhofer IZM in Berlin. The subject was "Energy for Wearables". In three sessions international speakers presented their work and ideas on energy generation, energy storage and energy management.
 
As shown in the presentation given by VARTA, the battery technology is quiet advanced, even though the size and energy density is still under optimization. Especially wireless rechargeable batteries play an important role, as explained by Würth and Fraunhofer ENAS. There are a lot of energy harvesting technologies under investigation, as shown in the presentation by Fraunhofer IZM. The Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Center ZBT in Duisburg presented new small mobile fuel cells. The University of Jena presented a combination of solar energy generation with an organic battery. But most of these products still need more development to reach a commercial status. Very important ideas were described around an intelligent smart energy management, e.g. by Microdul and Fraunhofer IIS.
 
In summary, only a combination of generation and storage technology together with a smart energy management has the potential to solve the problems of the energy supply for wearables.
 
Wearables play an increasingly important role in daily life, e.g. in sports, the medical field for recording vital parameters and for use in active therapeutic units, but also to support production processes, aids in road traffic, etc. They consist of different micro- and nanotechnical, optical and digital components. The MSTextiles Forum examines the topics intelligent textiles, wearable sensor technology and wearables. The aim of the event is to bring together experts from microtechnology and textile technology in order to initiate cooperation and joint projects.