Human Motion: Sustainable Power for Wearable Electronics

With the rapid development of wearable computing systems, portable power sources have become an important concern for the convenient and long-lasting use of these systems. Two wearable harvesters that harness kinetic energy from human motion were developed to provide sustainable power levels for wearable computing systems. The experiments showed that both the backpack-based harvester and the insole-like harvester could continuously power wearable electronics, such as GPS units, wireless body area networks, and other portable devices via USB power sockets. This article is part of a special issue on wearable computing.