Kinetic Energy Harvester for Body Motion

This paper reports the design, fabrication, and testing of a permanent-magnet energy harvester generator for body motion. The described generator was capable to extract up to 117μW of power from walking, employing a non-resonant rotational mechanism. The planar generator proposed is composed of a rotor having multiple NdFeB permanent magnet pole-pairs with an eccentric proof mass. The stator has a multi-stacked gearshaped planar coil. A change on the magnetic flux induces a voltage in the coil when the rotor moves as a result of body movement. A 2cm prototype was tested on several body locations while walking.