Portable Mobile Gait Monitor System Based on Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Monitoring Gait and Powering Electronics

Abstract

A self-powered portable triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) is used to collect biomechanical energy and monitor the human motion, which is the new development trend in portable devices. We have developed a self-powered portable triboelectric nanogenerator, which is used in human motion energy collection and monitoring mobile gait and stability capability. The materials involved are common PTFE and aluminum foil, acting as a frictional layer, which can output electrical signals based on the triboelectric effect. Moreover, 3D printing technology is used to build the optimized structure of the nanogenerator, which has significantly improved its performance. TENG is conveniently integrated with commercial sport shoes, monitoring the gait and stability of multiple human motions, being strategically placed at the immediate point of motion during the respective process. The presented equipment uses a low-frequency stabilized voltage output system to provide power for the wearable miniature electronic device, while stabilizing the voltage output, in order to effectively prevent voltage overload. The interdisciplinary research has provided more application prospects for nanogenerators regarding self-powered module device integration.

Human body IoT systems based on the triboelectrification effect: energy harvesting, sensing, interfacing and communication

“…By integrating a portable TENG-based sensor into a commercial sport shoe, Mao et al achieved the monitoring of human gait and stability. 160 As shown in Fig. 7c, the materials involved are common PTFE and aluminum (Al) foil, acting as a triboelectric layer, which generated electrical signals based on the triboelectric effect.…”

A Review of Recent Advances in Vital Signals Monitoring of Sports and Health via Flexible Wearable Sensors

“…In addition to monitoring the motions of joints, wearable strain sensors also have been applied to detect the motions of feet, which are widely used in feet type assessment, sports training, clinical gait analysis, and feet pathology diagnosis. To collect gait information in real-time, Mao et al [ 88 ] proposed a self-powered portable TENG. Using 3D printing technology, the performance of the sensor was significantly improved as demonstrated by the results.…”

Kinetic energy harvesting based sensing and IoT systems: A review

“…Beyond using the ambient kinetic energy to power the load for scientific research, some recent studies focus on utilizing the converted electrical energy to power a whole IoT system (Bonisoli et al, 2017;Zhao C. et al, 2019;Mao et al, 2021), which generally comprises the energy harvester, the energy management circuit, sensors, and the BLE-based SOC. Moreover, to further reduce the power consumption and promote the system performance, some IoT co-designs using self-powered sensors, i.e., treating the harvester as a sensor as well as a power source simultaneously, have been proposed (Li et al, 2021b;Zhang et al, 2021;Hailiang Yang, 2022).…”

“…The self-supplied step-counter's layout, implementation, and system architecture are shown in Figure 9A. Coincidently, a self-powered portable TENG was developed (Mao et al, 2021), which is used in human motion energy collection and monitoring mobile gait. The presented prototype uses a low-frequency stabilized voltage output system to provide power for the wearable miniature electronic device while stabilizing the voltage output.…”

“…(A) Layout, implementation, and system architecture of the self-supplied step-counter (Bonisoli et al, 2017). (B) Schematic diagram, working modules, and implementation of the proposed portable mobile gait monitor system (Mao et al, 2021). (C) Schematic illustration, circuit diagram, and experimental setup of the H-P/TENG (Zhao C. et al, 2019).…”