Design, fabrication, and performance evaluation of an exercise mat utilizing kinetic energy from humans' footsteps to generate power

With the global energy demand exponentially growing and the nonrenewable sources of energy depleting, a sustainable, renewable source of energy is highly needed. Meanwhile, a large amount of human energy is being released and wasted each day. This was seen as a potential source of energy and a number of methods have been used in order to utilize it, including the piezoelectric effect. This research attempted to further improve the studies about human energy and piezoelectricity as an energy source and has a main objective of designing, fabricating, and evaluating a simple and low-cost but portable and efficient energy-harvesting exercise mat that generates power by utilizing the mechanical energy from humans' footsteps; this power is then stored in a battery which was used to charge a cellphone. A quantitative methodology was carried out in this research study that used Design of Experiments (DOE). The human energy directed on the energy-harvesting exercise mat was able to be converted to electrical energy in lithium-ion batteries with an average efficiency of 7.3% V.