Electrical pulse generator harvesting body movement energy
AssigneeWisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
InventorsXudong Wang, Jun Li
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
An energy harvesting system for use with the human body may use an eccentrically mounted weight winding a mainspring that drives a mechanical clock mechanism. The mechanical clock mechanism in turn may produce pulses of electricity, for example, through periodic flexing of a piezoelectric or triboelectric material during the regular motion of the mechanical timing mechanism. By remaining in a mechanical rather than electrical domain, improved simplicity and efficiency may be obtained in the generation of regularly spaced uniform pulses.
Claims17
A mechanical energy harvesting pulse generator comprising:
- a housing adapted for support against a movable portion of a user's body;
- a weight movably attached to the housing to move with respect to the housing with motion by the portion of the user's body;
- an energy storage spring;
- a winder mechanism communicating between the weight and the energy storage spring to wind the energy storage spring with movement of the weight with respect to the housing;
- a mechanical oscillator communicating with the energy storage spring to provide reciprocating motion using energy of the energy storage spring;
- and
- an electrical generator moved by the mechanical oscillator to generate a regular train of electrical pulses;
- wherein the mechanical oscillator is a balance wheel and escapement and wherein the electrical generator comprises at least one pallet of the escapement to flex with operation of the escapement.
A method of topical therapy employing a therapeutic device having a mechanical energy harvesting pulse generator providing a housing adapted for support against a movable portion of a user's body, a weight movably attached to the housing to move with respect to the housing with motion by the portion of the user's body, an energy storage spring, a winder mechanism communicating between the weight and the energy storage spring to wind the energy storage spring with movement of the weight with respect to the housing, a mechanical oscillator communicating with the energy storage spring to provide reciprocating motion using energy of the energy storage spring, and an electrical generator moved by the mechanical oscillator to generate a regular train of electrical pulses, the method comprising:
- (a) attaching the mechanical energy harvesting pulse generator to a patient to be activated by normal body movement of the patient;
- (b) providing electrical connection between the electrical generator and electrodes attached to the skin of the patient at a location to apply a regular train of therapeutic electrical pulses to the skin at the location;
- and
- wherein electrical pulses produced by the electrical generator are transmitted to the skin without conversion losses from rectifiers.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.