Human power-based energy harvesting strategies for mobile electronic devices

Abstract

Energy problems arise with the proliferation of mobile electronic devices, which range from entertainment tools to life saving medical instruments. The large amount of energy consumption and increasing mobility of electronic devices make it urgent that new power sources should be developed. It has been gradually recognized that the human body is highly flexible in generating applicable power from sources of heat dissipation, joint rotation, enforcement of body weight, vertical displacement of mass centers, and even elastic deformation of tissues and other attachments. These basic combinations of daily activities or metabolic phenomena open up possibilities for harvesting energy which is strong enough to power mobile or even implantable medical devices which could be used for a long time or be recharged permanently. A comprehensive review is presented in this paper on the latest developed or incubating electricity generation methods based on human power which would serve as promising candidates for future mobile power. Thermal and mechanical energy, investigated more thoroughly so far, will particularly be emphasized. Thermal energy relies on body heat and employs the property of thermoelectric materials, while mechanical energy is generally extracted in the form of enforcement or displacement excitation. For illustration purposes, the piezoelectric effect, dielectric elastomer and the electromagnetic induction couple, which can convert force directly into electricity, were also evaluated. Meanwhile, examples are given to explain how to adopt inertia generators for converting displacement energy via piezoelectric, electrostatic, electromagnetic or magnetostrictive vibrators. Finally, future prospects in harvesting energy from human power are made in conclusion.

Design for sustainable behaviour: a case study of using human-power as an everyday energy source

“…Human-powered products (HPP), as perceived in recent research literature as alternative power source for battery running electronic products (Jansen, 2011;Jansen and Stevels, 2006;Jia and Liu, 2009), is considered as one solution to reduce the environmental impact of products, including problems such as the over-consumption of energy (electricity) caused by increase of EuP. In other words, users of HPP no longer rely solely on the use of electricity from the grid to drive the EuP in use.…”

A Technology for Soft and Wearable Generators

“…For instance, an insulin pump consumes approximately 5 Watts [3] and the Nexus One smartphone (HTC Corporation, Taiwan) consumes 25 milliWatts in standby, 330 milli-Watts in idle, and 750 milli-Watts during a phone call [4]. So to eliminate the need to recharge batteries, a similar or greater quantity of power needs to be sourced.…”

Power Analysis for Piezoelectric Energy Harvester

“…In the literature, several books are recently published in this research domain [5][6][7][8]. Several review papers are also published in all different aspects concerning energy harvesting technologies [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. This paper investigates the necessary conditions to enhance the extracted AC electrical power from the exciting vibration energy using piezoelectric material.…”