Energy Harvesting From the Human Body for Biomedical Applications

There is research being conducted to use the power extracted from the human body for low-power biomedical applications. Typically, wearable biomedical devices contain a variety of biomedical sensors that are used to obtain energy in the physical form (i.e., body heat) and convert it to an electrical form (i.e., voltage). In addition, it also contains signal conditioning circuits and wireless communication technologies. Power can actually be harnessed from everyday activities, such as breathing, arm motion, walking, running, and pedalling.The focus of energy harvesting for medical applications is to develop biocompatible devices that can be worn on the human body in the form of clothes, watches, footwear, or glasses to extract energy from the body and convert it to electrical power. This power can then be utilized to power-up medical devices without any harm to the user. This article discusses energy harvesting mainly from two biomedical applications along with the various techniques that have been developed to harvest energy from the body using thermoelectric, piezoelectric, and electromagnetic generators.