SUMMARY

The transformation of ambient vibrational energy into low-power electricity for enabling self-powered wireless electronic components has been widely researched over the past two decades. The domain of wearable electronics and sensors is also a growing field of research and in industry with applications such as fitness and health monitoring, as well as wearable equipment that tracks performance in sports. Additionally, smart flooring systems with Internet of Things integration have also received increased interest for tracking, security, and healthcare application. This work explores the intersection of these emerging fields – the potential of human-scale motion energy to enable self-powered sensor networks for on-body devices and potentially for indoor and outdoor smart flooring concepts. Electromechanical models are developed and analyzed for energy harvesting from base-excited and plucked bimorph piezoelectric cantilevers, as well as direct force excitation of curved unimorph harvesters. This presentation discusses the development and experimental validation of these models. Using measured human body acceleration and forces, the potential for energy harvesting from human motion using piezoelectric harvesters is quantified through experiments and model simulations.