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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

Phys.org [phys.org]:

An innovation turning waste material into stretchable devices may soon provide a new option for creating self-powered biomedical inventions.

A team from Purdue University used lignin to create triboelectric nanogenerators. TENGs help conserve mechanical energy and turn it into power. Lignin is a waste byproduct from the pulp and paper industries, and it is one of the most abundant biopolymers on Earth.
...
Wu said the lignin-based triboelectric devices also could function as self-powered sensors to detect and monitor the mechanical activities from the human body in applications such as health monitoring, human-machine interface, teleoperated robotics, consumer electronics and virtual and augmented reality technologies.

One man's kitchen scraps are another man's cyber-machines.

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