Human motion energy harvesting using a piezoelectric MFC patch

The improvements in efficiency of electronic com- ponents and miniaturization is quickly pushing wearable de- vices and cloth-embedded electronics. Human energy harvesting is a way to power these components reducing the need of batteries and charging. Among the different approaches in harvesting energy, the use of kinetic energy is quite interesting in particular for powering during exercise and moving activity independently of body temperature. This work explores the case of kinetic energy from bending of a piezoelectric patch. For assessing the quality of the system a testing setup has been designed and controlled by means of knee joint recordings obtained from a large motion dataset. The results of the chosen patch is presented with promising results.