Harvesting Electrical Energy from Body Heat to Power Bio Medical Wearables

Abstract

Energy harvesting has become a key factor in Biomedical applications. Research on energy scavenging from body motion has been investigated to evaluate the feasibility of powering a wearable or implantable systems. Energy from walking has been previously extracted using generators placed on shoes, backpacks, and knee braces while producing power levels ranging from milliwatts to watts. The research presented in this paper examines the available power from body locations. The finger, wrist, and palm were the chosen target localizations. There are many untapped renewable energy resources such as wireless charging, thermal energy, and vibration energy that can be used as an alternative to the conventional sources such as solar, wind, and hydro. As we are moving towards Industry 4.0, new advancements in technology has been introduced. Therefore, with a great advancement comes a greater need for powering up devices by thermal technique. Implantable biomedical equipment such as pacemaker and battery using biomedical wearables such as the blood pressure monitor consumes low power and provides greater consistency. In order to provide continuous supply to devices, a new approach of extracting power from the heat of the human body is implemented thus avoiding unnecessary invasive surgeries for implant.