2 Ph.D. Positions: Designing intelligence in battery-less micromechanical structures

Intelligent devices are everywhere (in sensors monitoring infrastructure, in medical prostheses, wearables and smart speakers). However, their autonomy is severely constrained by the need for large batteries, which also have a negative environmental impact. A recent study forecasted that, by 2025, we will be throwing away 80 million batteries a day. We are looking for two Ph.D. students to overcome this challenge using intelligent micromechanical systems.

In the same way that automatic Swiss watches power themselves from the motion of the wearer, we will design and make (micro)-mechanical computing elements that use energy from ambient vibrations – without the need for power wires or batteries. These elements will rely on geometric nonlinearities to perform complex tasks. In fact, while nonlinearity is usually avoided in mechanical designs, here we will leverage it to achieve unprecedented computational capabilities: by combining nonlinear elements as ‘lego pieces’ a targeted response will be achieved.