“Controlled Slip” Energy Harvesting While Walking

Rapid development in wearable electronics and systems continues to impose challenges on portable energy storage sustained over time, and thus human energy harvesting is a potentially attractive means of sustainable, long-term energy. We introduce a novel ‘controlled slip’ energy harvesting approach for capturing energy during human locomotion. While slip is normally considered undesirable, controlled slip holds potential to enable a significant amount of energy harvesting during each step of human gait. Custom-designed ‘controlled slip’ energy harvesting shoes were fabricated by mounting a sliding plate and a generator with a one-way bearing to the sole of standard walking shoes, which induces controlled forward slip during early stance while energy is harvested. Fourteen healthy subjects performed treadmill walking trials with the ‘controlled slip’ energy harvesting shoes which generated average electrical power of 1.15-1.44 W at walking speeds of 2.9-4.3 km/h. Interestingly, without prompting, subjects chose to walk with the ‘controlled slip’ energy harvesting shoes in either one of two distinct ways: landing with the heel first (heel strikers) or landing with the toe first (toe strikers). While heel strikers and toe strikers exhibited similar electrical power output and hip flexion angle at initial foot contact, heel strikers had higher peak ankle power and lower knee flexion angle at initial foot contact than toe strikers. ‘Controlled slip’ energy harvesting could potentially generate electrical power for a broad spectrum of wearable devices.