Preliminary Testing of an Angled Sliding Shoe for Potential Human Energy Harvesting Applications

Human energy harvesting is a promising power source for wearable devices. However, harvesting energy during gait is still not feasible mainly because of practical problems related to increased metabolic costs. There may be potential to harvest energy from human gait without increasing metabolic cost with sliding shoes that could increase stride length. This paper presents preliminary testing on the effect of angled sliding shoes on stride length and metabolic cost. The angled sliding shoe is custom-made by mounting a sliding mechanism under the sole of a standard walking shoe. Five healthy subjects performed treadmill walking trials at 1 m/s while wearing three different pairs of shoes: angled sliding shoes, fixed shoes and normal shoes. Stride length and metabolic cost were analyzed and compared. Contrary to what was expected, walking with the angled sliding shoes decreased stride length and increased metabolic cost, possibly because of the heavy weight and high elevated heel of the angled sliding shoe. These results suggest that future versions of sliding shoes should be lighter and thinner to avoid decreasing stride length and increasing metabolic cost.