Thermoelectric Bracelet Heats or Cools Your Body in One Switch

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By Eva Recinos2013-10-27 00:00:33 UTC

With colder temperatures rolling in, you may feel inclined to turn up the heat — which, in turn, turns up the price on your electric bill (and ensuing fights with roommates.)

A new bracelet may solve this problem by letting you control body temperature. A group of students at MIT created a thermoelectric bracelet that keeps tabs on air and skin temperature and allows you to control your body temperature — and, consequently, helps buildings conserve energy.

See also: Withings Scale Monitors Temperature and CO2 Levels in Your Home

The team behind the winning design, Wristify, took home $10,000 and the first prize in MIT's Making and Designing Materials Engineering Competition (MADMEC). The annual competition is comprised of two- to five-person groups.

This year's theme focused on how materials science "can provide solutions for energy storage, building efficiency, transportation and many other critical needs," according to MIT's website. Each team received $1,000 to build its prototype.

"We found that right now, 16.5% of total U.S. energy use comes from heating and cooling buildings and houses," Wristify team member Sam Shames wrote in an email to Mashable. "We want to lower that number while helping people be more comfortable. This idea is captured nicely in the question: Why heat or cool an entire house or building when you could heat or cool a person directly instead?"

Shames explains that the bracelet can be toggled from heating to cooling mode with a switch while the bracelet's software controls the pulses.

The team's inspiration stemmed from the members' personal experiences with temperature problems. For example, cofounder and team member Mike Gibson was living with a roommate accustomed to a different climate (other team members include David-Cohen Tanugi and Matt Smith).

The bracelet uses a thermoelectric module to provide controllable and customizable thermal pulses to heat or cool the wrist, according to Shames. He explains that if you heat up part of your body in a cold room, you'll automatically feel more comfortable — even more so than if you turn on a heater. The human body reacts more to direct skin changes than to changes in the absolute temperature of a room.

Wristify's prototype, shown in the video above, resembles a wristwatch and runs for up to eight hours on a lithium polymer battery. The team hopes to make it available to the public in the near future.

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Image: Flickr, ilovebutter

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Topics: Gadgets, MIT, Science, Tech, Wearable Tech