Being able to monitor cows’ vitals in this way wouldn’t just save energy. Tracking health statuses in real time can help ranchers prevent costly diseases and improve the entire ranch’s efficiency.
Tomorrow’s ranchers may be able to monitor their animals’ health from the comfort of their home—and completely off the grid. By attaching small, pendulum-based devices to the ankles of cattle, Chinese researchers believe they’re one step closer to developing self-powered “smart ranches.”
“There is a tremendous amount of kinetic energy that can be harvested in cattle’s daily 9movements, such as walking, running, and even neck movement,” Zutao Zhang, a co-author of the research and an energy researcher at Southwest Jiaotong University in China, said in a press release. Harnessing this untapped energy source can then power wireless sensors on cattle that can inform a rancher about their herd’s health.
After building a prototype, the researchers attached it to a motor-powered crank that mimicked a cow walking. The shell wearable produced an average power of 7 milliwatts and required a frequency of 2 Hertz—more power with a lower frequency of back-and-forth motion than previous studies’ designs for kinetic energy harvesters, meaning the new device is more efficient and better adapted to real-world conditions.
Of course, the study wouldn’t be complete without hooking the device up to a bovine experimental subject. A cow wore the device on its ankle while in a feedlot and grazing in a pasture. Over the course of a day, the researchers expected that their device could harvest almost 30 Joules from a cow in a feedlot, and over 100 Joules from one roaming a pasture. This power could be stored in a battery and used to power monitoring technology, like GPS, pulse, and temperature sensors.
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