Design of Piezoelectricity Harvester using Footwear

Harvesting mechanical energy from human motion is an attractive approach for obtaining clean and sustainable electric energy to power wearable sensors, which are widely used for health monitoring, activity recognition, gait analysis and so on. This project studies a piezoelectric energy harvester for the parasitic mechanical energy in shoes originated from human motion. The harvester is based on a specially designed sandwich structure with a thin thickness, which makes it readily compatible with a shoe.

Wearable sensors are becoming smaller and increasingly widely used, resulting in an increasing need for independent and compact power supplies. Electrochemical batteries, the most common power supplies for wearable sensors, cannot meet the need because of their limited energy storage capacity and potential environmental and health risks, emerging as a critical bottleneck for wearable sensors.

Keywords: piezoelectric sensors, arduino uno, DC fan