Energy Harvesting and the Human Health

Currently, the energy supply for the portable and autonomous equipment comes almost exclusively from the battery. Unfortunately the maintenance of those sources of energy brings disadvantages due to the need for frequent recharging or replacement. In many cases the battery brings extra weight and volume to the electronic equipment, limiting its autonomy. Some possible alternative methods to replace the batteries as power source, or to achieve better maintenance of existing (or smaller) batteries, are the so called Energy Harvesting (EH) methods, i.e. to obtain energy from the environment. For the medical equipment, there is also a possibility to recover and store energy generated by the human body in its usual activities. To harvest energy from the human body or from the environment requires specific technology and materials. The electronic circuits must have extremely high efficiency both in energy conversion and energy consumption. Experiments were performed in order to calculate the power that could be generated from the chest during breathing, from the feet, during walking, etc. For the experiments, mostly piezoelectric effect was explored.