Scavenging energy from human motion with tubular dielectric polymer

Scavenging energy from human motion is a challenge to supply low consumption systems for sport or medical applications. A promising solution is to use electroactive polymers and especially dielectric polymers to scavenge mechanical energy during walk. In this paper, we present a tubing dielectric generator which is the first step toward an integration of these structures into textiles. For a 10cm length and under a strain of 100%, the structure is able to scavenge 1.5 mu J for a poling voltage of 200V and up to 40 mu J for a poling voltage of 1000V. The generator is finally compared to our previous planar structure, and the power management module for those structures is developed.