A Self-Sensing and Self-Powered Wearable System Based on Multi-Source Human Motion Energy Harvesting

Small. 2024 Jul;20(28):e2311036. doi: 10.1002/smll.202311036. Epub 2024 Feb 11.

Abstract

Wearable devices play an indispensable role in modern life, and the human body contains multiple wasted energies available for wearable devices. This study proposes a self-sensing and self-powered wearable system (SS-WS) based on scavenging waist motion energy and knee negative energy. The proposed SS-WS consists of a three-degree-of-freedom triboelectric nanogenerator (TDF-TENG) and a negative energy harvester (NEH). The TDF-TENG is driven by waist motion energy and the generated triboelectric signals are processed by deep learning for recognizing the human motion. The triboelectric signals generated by TDF-TENG can accurately recognize the motion state after processing based on Gate Recurrent Unit deep learning model. With double frequency up-conversion, the NEH recovers knee negative energy generation for powering wearable devices. A model wearing the single energy harvester can generate the power of 27.01 mW when the movement speed is 8 km h-1, and the power density of NEH reaches 0.3 W kg-1 at an external excitation condition of 3 Hz. Experiments and analysis prove that the proposed SS-WS can realize self-sensing and effectively power wearable devices.

Keywords: energy harvesting; frequency up‐conversion; self‐powered; self‐sensing; wearable device.

MeSH terms

  • Electric Power Supplies*
  • Humans
  • Motion
  • Movement
  • Wearable Electronic Devices*