Wireless Headphones

This morning I visited a bunch of twenty-something kids that have developed the most amazing technology.

One of them is doing a PhD in neuroscience (or something like) that and in the course of his work noticed that here is a chemical potential difference between two side of a human head when measured at the ears.

The electrical engineer amongst them has managed to rig up a system to extract a micro-current from this chemical potential and they have developed a prototype set of wireless headphones which only consumes the power extracted from the head. That is, in principle it never needs charging!

It incorporates a specially modified and low power wireless data transmission technology which is good enough to transmit music in real time, some very low power speakers, and the energy capture and storage system. The power they have to work with is substantially below that used by current headphones and given this I was amazed at the sound quality of the prototype.

One of the very innovative inclusions is that the chemist amongst them has filled the rubber earplugs with micro-wire and this is used as a contact electrode. Just amazing.

I asked them about intellectual property and apparently one of them has a mate who knows a little about patents and they have self-filed a US patent application. I further inquired as to what they were claiming as their invention and they said the chemical potential of the human head. I noted to them that this was a dangerous strategy because one isn’t supposed to be able to get granted patents on natural features of the human body. I hope they listen to me.

It occurs to me that even if their system doesn’t work in practice that the low power consumption technologies that they are developing will allow headphones with rechargeable batteries to go around a month between recharges. Even that is something worth considering.

I can’t get too excited about this stuff. In my working life I have seen dozens of such breakthrough technologies that never got to market. The primary reason is because there is often some ‘gotcha’ in the technology that means that a critical feature can’t be released. Often the techies fall so in love with their ideas that they continue to ignore these gotcha features until they run out of money or energy, or both.

Nevertheless, I will keep an eye on these kids and see how they go.