Flourishing energy harvesters for future body sensor network: from single to multiple energy sources

Abstract

Summary Body sensor network (bodyNET) offers possibilities for future disease diagnosis, preventive health care, rehabilitation, and treatment. However, the eventual realization demands reliable and sustainable power sources. The flourishing energy harvesters (EHs) have provided prominent techniques for practically addressing the concurrent energy issue. Targeting for a specific energy source, wearable EHs with a sole conversion mechanism are well investigated. Hybrid EHs integrating different effects for a single source or multi-sources are attaining growing attention, for they provide another degree of freedom concerning a higher-level energy utility. Merging EHs with other functional electronics, diversified functional self-sustainable systems are developed, paving the way for the accomplishment of bodyNET. This review introduces the evolution of wearable EHs from a single effect to hybridized mechanisms for multiple energy sources and wearable to implantable self-sustainable systems. Last, we provide our perspectives on the future development of hybrid EHs to be more competitive with conventional batteries.

Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) Enabled Virtual Shop Applications Using Self‐Powered Sensor Enhanced Soft Robotic Manipulator

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Progress in the Triboelectric Human–Machine Interfaces (HMIs)-Moving from Smart Gloves to AI/Haptic Enabled HMI in the 5G/IoT Era

“…Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), first reported by Prof. Zhong Lin Wang in 2012 [48], has been widely developed as energy harvesters for mechanical energy scavenging, ranging from natural wind energy [49][50][51][52][53], blue energy [54][55][56][57][58][59] to the human body's biomechanical energy [37,43,[60][61][62][63][64], thanks to its exceptional merits of good output performance, wide material choices, good scalability, simple fabrication and low cost. Considering that the kinetic energies generated from the daily activities of humans, e.g., hand motion, joint rotation, foot motion, etc., contain valuable information of the corresponding motions, so such kinds of motion-induced energies could be collected by the nanogenerators towards a fully self-powered sensing strategy for human-machine interactions as well as health status monitoring purpose [65].…”

Hierarchical Honeycomb-Structured Electret/Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Biomechanical and Morphing Wing Energy Harvesting

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