Energy harvesting from dancing: for broadening in participation in STEM fields

Energy harvesting from structure vibration, human motion or environmental source has been the focus of researchers in the past few decades. This paper proposes a novel design that is suitable to harvest energy from human motions such as dancing or physical exercise and use the device to engage young students in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields and outreach activities. The energy harvester (EH) device was designed for a dominant human operational frequency range of 1–5 Hz and it can be wearable by human. We proposed to incorporate different genres of music coupled with energy harvesting technologies for motivation and energy generation. Students will learn both science and art together, since the energy harvesting requires understanding basic physical phenomena and the art enables various physical movements that imparts the largest motion transfer to the EH device. Therefore, the systems are coupled to each other. Young people follow music updates more than robotics or energy harvesting researches. Most popular videos on YouTube and VEVO are viewed more than 100 million times. Perhaps, integrating the energy harvesting research with music or physical exercise might enhance students’ engagement in science, and needs investigation. A multimodal energy harvester consisting of piezoelectric and electromagnetic subsystems, which can be wearable in the leg, is proposed in this study. Three piezoelectric cantilever beams having permanent magnets at the ends are connected to a base through a slip ring. Stationary electromagnetic coils are installed in the base and connected in series. Whenever the device is driven by any oscillation parallel to the base, the unbalanced rotor will rotate generating energy across the stationary coils in the base. In another case, if the device is driven by an oscillation perpendicular to the base, a stress will be induced within the cantilever beams generating energy across the piezoelectric materials.

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