Self-Powered Wearable Limb Motion Monitoring System Using Flexible Thermoelectric Power Generator

This paper reports a self-powered wearable limb motion monitoring system using flexible thermoelectric power generators (f-TEG), which allows, for the first time, monitoring joint movement and metabolic energy of the human body that is powered by body heat. Experiments indicate that the output voltage of f-TEG worn on the leg reaches 23 mV under a static state, and 90 mV in a moving state. The maximum output power reaches 1600 μW and remains 560 μW through a DC booster converter. The wearable systems can achieve self-powered metabolic energy estimation based on a data-driven model, with an estimation accuracy of up to 10.8%.