Human Passive Motion and a User-friendly Energy

Harvesting System
Hamid Abdi
Center for Intelligent Systems Research
Deakin University
Waurn ponds 3216, Victoria, Australia
hamid.abdi@deakin.edu.au
Navid Mohajer
Center for Mechatronics and Automation
School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Tehran
Tehran, Iran
namohajer@yahoo.com

AbstractEnergy harvesting for wireless sensors and consumer
electronic devices can significantly improve reliability and
environmental sustainability of the devices by eliminating
dependency to rechargeable batteries and using clean and renewable
energy sources. Energy harvesting from different energy sources is
widely discussed among researchers and entrepreneurs including
harvesting energy in micro scale. This topic is receiving more
attention due to increasing number of low power consumer electronic
devices and wireless sensors and increasing demand for convenience
and availability of them. Among different sources, the energy
harvesting from humans passive motions is specifically useful for
consumer electronic devices such as mp3 players, Implantable
Medical Devices (IMD), and in future it can be used for other
devices. This paper presents a feasibility study for an energy
harvesting system from humans breathing. The system is based on a
modified pants belt integrated with a piezoelectric film and
harvesting circuit for generating electricity from reciprocal
abdominal motions of the user. The proposed system allows a safe
and convenient energy harvesting with no influence on the lungs
movements. The results of the simulation for this model are
presented.
Keywords Energy harvesting, Piezoelectric, Human passive
Motion, Energy Scavenging, Consumer electronic devices, Wireless
sensor, Implantable medical devices
I. INTRODUCTION
Green and renewable energy is of the interest of many
researchers, governments and public because of the upraising
environmental impacts of greenhouse gas emission and
increasing costs of the energy from fossil sources [1]. In
addition, the dependency to rechargeable batteries of portable
electronic devices and the requirement for regular access to
electric networks limits the performance of the devices [2].
Among the various subjects in the field of green and
renewable energy, the subject of energy harvesting for
wireless sensors and consumer electronic devices are widely
discussed by researchers to increase the users convenience
including reducing or eliminating the need for rechargeable
batteries and minimizing the necessity for regular access to the
electric network [3], [4], [5], [6].
Generally speaking, small size energy harvesters for such
devices can produce energy form (a) kinetic energy sources
such as wind, waves, or vibrating structures; (b)
electromagnetic energy sources such as wireless
communication spectrum; (c) solar energy; (d) thermal energy
sources such as humans body temperature and vehicles
motor heat; (e) energy from biological mechanisms such as
bio-fuels [7].
Although small electronic devices are mostly powered by
batteries, there are an increasing number of wireless sensors
using energy harvesters instead of the batteries [8], [1]. For
consumer electronic devices, there are different emerging
technologies that are under research or in commercialization
stages [2]. Solar powered mobile phone and Apples

yoyo
battery charger for iPhone

are in this category.

Harvesting energy from humans is particularly useful for
soldiers portable electronic equipment, Implantable Medical
Devices (IMD) and consumer electronic devices [3], [5], [9],
[10], [7]. These harvesters produce energy from humans
kinetic energy, thermal energy or body biological processes
energies [2], [7] and they can benefit soldiers by decreasing
the carrying load, patients by increasing the lifetime of the
devices and reducing the number of surgeries to change the
battery of the devices and consumer electronics users by
providing a green and endless source of energy. In future, it
could be more beneficial for a lot of applications especially for
consumer electronic devices. The energy scavenging from
humans temperature has been studied and it was shown that it
is capable to produce a very limited amount of energy that can
be useful for some IMD [11], [7]. The energy harvesting with
biological sources is out of the scope of this research.
Humans consume a considerable amount of energy for all
activities including even thinking and sleeping. For example, a
70kg male person consumes 11000kj in average per day [12].
This is an average power of 127W. The body approximately
consumes 100W when it rests and 1630W in a sprint walk. It
has been shown that for normal daily activities, about 25% of
energy is used by the skeleton and heart, 19% by the brain,
10% by the kidneys and 27% by the liver and spleen [7]. For
example a 70kg swimming athlete who swims 3km in 40
minutes consumes 770kcal4.2J/cal energy with the average
power of 1342W [7].
On the other hand there is a noticeable decrease in the
power consumption of portable electronic devices because of
technology improvement in low power electronic hardware
and efficient communication methods as well as intelligent
functionality of the devices [9]. There are also an increasing
number of devices and applications for low power portable
electronic devices. This includes low power wireless sensors,
portable consumer electronics, and IMD. For instance by only
couple of milliwatts an mp3 player or a simple mobile phone
can be powered in the case of using a mature harvesting
technology for powering it.
Within the category of energy harvesting from body
motions, there are various methods including active and
passive body motion methods [3], [13], [5], [10]. For example,
active methods for generating electricity include a well-known
old bicycles dynamo generators and piezoelectric plates in a
dance club [5]. The passive methods include wearable knee-
mounted energy harvesting [14], shoe mounted devices [15],
[16], or harvesters from breathing and natural body motions
[7]. Generally in the active methods, the person is actively
engaged to the electricity generating process and in the passive
methods, the harvesting is performed from persons passive
motions. Clearly, the passive methods are more convenient
however typically they generate less energy.
This paper presents a design and simulation of an energy
harvesting system from humans breathing. The proposed
system is based on integration of a piezoelectric harvester
transducer and circuit with a pants belt to generate electricity
from the abdominal motions as shown in Figure. 1.

Figure 1. Integration of the energy harvester with a pants belt for safe and
convenient energy harvesting from human body
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows; In
Section 2, different methods of energy harvesting from body
motions are briefly reviewed and the principle of piezoelectric
transducers are introduced. Energy harvesting from humans
abdominal motions is presented in Section 3. Modeling and
Simulink simulation of the proposed system are presented in
Section 4. Finally the conclusion remarks are stated in Section
5.
II. ENERGY HARVESTING METHODS FROM
HUMANS MOTIONS
There are various methods that can be used for energy
scavenging from humans motion. They are briefly introduced
in below.
A. Electrodynamics Method
The Faraday law shows that a variable magnetic flux can
generate electric current, so the Faraday law is the base of
operation of the electromotive generators as the former energy
harvesting strategy. In the 80s, Seiko

developed a kinetic
watch powered by human movement. It dispensed the
conventional batteries, being the human arm movement used
instead. The potential of this system to power larger devices is
limited by the slowness how people move.
In small scale power harvesters there are already several
types of these generators use mechanical vibrations or periodic
humans arms or knees motions for generating electricity.
According to [8], the American and British armies have tried
to power up sensors placed in soldiers boots. These devices
allow radiotelephone operation, which is often equipped with
heavy batteries. However, these energy harvesting devices
were not sufficiently robust to withstand extreme conditions
[15].
In the early 90s, freeplay

marketed devices such as

radios, lamps and lanterns with handles to provide increased
capacity of energy availability through the incorporation of
this type of energy harvesting systems. Since then it has
developed generators with cranks to charge mobile phones,
foot pumps capable of powering larger appliances and a series
of prototypes of medical equipment with handles. These
motion based systems today are employed on bicycles
generators, radios and mobile phones. When the handle is
moved 10 cm (diameter) by a force of 10N at a rate of 3
rev/sec is produced 9.3W (neglecting losses), 10 times higher
than the power produced by the rigid body [13]. The rigid
body motion is more susceptible to vibratory movements than
to constant movements, since it uses inertia, i.e. the resistance
to movement. The power available for each vibration cycle is
just the kinetic energy that remains in the system.
Assuming that the equipment is attached to the body of a
person and considering that the weight movement is
equivalent to the human body motion, the kinetic energy is
about 10J and the electric power generated is about 10W,
which is a lower value than those produced by relative motion.
Thus, this generator can operate unconsciously and can be
installed anywhere, obtaining a considerable amount of
energy. There are some effective methods for this mechanism,
as resonance generators, self-excitation generators and
rotational generators as gyroscopes.
B. Recent Methods
There are four strategies that they have recently used to
convert kinetic energy of humans motion into electrical
power; electrostatic, electromagnetic, piezoelectric and
magnetostrictive.
Electrostatic: this method is based on varactors ability to
produce electric charge when the area or distance of plates
changes. The most significant strengths of this method are
compatibility with MEMS fabrication technique besides low
cost implementing. However the electrostatic method cannot
be regarded as a completely self-powered strategy since it
need external power supply for the initial charging.
In order to improve the harvested power in electrostatic
method various schemes can be applied based on principle
mentioned above. For example an elastomer generator can be
used in the heel of a boot. When the heel is pressed against the
ground, the pad compresses the mounted elastomeric
membrane for producing a voltage. When a voltage is applied
across the electrodes, then it produces energy [17].

Figure 2. Electrostatic generator based on compression of a charged
dielectric elastomer mounted in heel [17]
Electromagnetic: When a material that owns magnetism
moves in the electromagnetic field, a voltage will be induced
on a coil surrounded it. Although this method eliminates the
deficiency of mechanical contact, the large volume of
electromagnetic material restricts the use of it to some extent,
especially when a MEMS implementation is considered.
Basically an electromagnetic system must include a coil
and a permanent magnet attached to an elastic element and
typically the mechanical movement in such system caused by
structural vibration. The magnetic field in the coil will be
easily induced if the magnet is large. However, the size and
layout of the magnet is limited by the spring and the structure
of the device itself.
Considering the natural walk movement, [18] tried to
implement electromagnetic generator in shoes. The application
of a permanent magnet in a shoe can be viable since walking
provides a shift in the magnet coil causing a magnetic field
that generates energy. This prototype is implemented in a shoe
only with a spring, a pendulum and a generator system that
produces a peak power near 1W i.e. enough energy to power a
radio during a walk. However, these generators are difficult to
integrate in shoe without causing discomfort to the user, since
the mechanical system has proved quite intrusive when
rotating generator adapted in a shoe. In [19] a model was
developed to improve the integration of the generator in the
shoes sole. As the rotating generators need to turn quickly to
achieve the desired efficiency, all other systems that involve
significant gear relationships make a considerable mechanical
complexity and a reasonably high torque and so leading to a
high probability of collapse (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Implementation of rotary electromagnetic energy harvester [19]
Magnetostrictive: very recently discovered feature of a
group of smart materials known as Magnetostrictive Material
(MsM) causes to hire them in energy harvesting systems.
Based on this feature, the electromagnetic behavior of MSMs
changes once an applied deformation causes an amount of
strain inside them. As a result of this, when The MsM be
placed in the electromagnetic field of a coil, a current will be
induced within the coil. Although a few numbers of works are
done to change the kinetic energy of humans motion to
electricity using MSM [20], more availability of MSM help to
observed more harvester systems in future.
Piezoelectric: Specific ability of another class of smart
materials such as PZT, PVDF or MFC to produce electricity
from an applied mechanical force is particularly useful for
harvesting energy from external passive motion like talking
[15], [16], [14]. The fundamental equation in these materials is
stated by:
{

} [

] {

} (1)
In this matrix equation T, D, S and E are stress, electrical
displacement, strain and electrical field, respectively. In the
matrix of coefficients c, e and are Youngs Modulus (elastic
stiffness), piezoelectric stress constant and permittivity (ability
of electrical charge production), respectively.
The mechanical energy can be any kind of compression,
tension and bending forces [15], [21]. These transducers have
been used for many applications from industrial measurement
systems to research measurement as well as in generating
mechanical waves in ultrasonic transducers and medical
applications. A distributed pressure load applied on a
piezoelectric film causes an electrical charge displacement as
depicted in Figure 5.

Figure 4. Piezoelectric transducer used to harvest energy caused by a normal
distributed force
Various configurations of piezoelectric material can be
used for energy harvesting purpose. For instance piezoelectric
transducers have been recently used to design energy
harvesting shoes. They can scavenge some power from
walking energy and the dynamics of the force on the heel and
toes [22]. The average power produced by the shoe mounted
system was up to 8.4mW per foot strike and during the walk
which is an active process. Thus, besides being able to apply
this energy in MP3 players and mobile phones will be also
possible to use, not only for IMD, but also for any kind of
portable device. One of the most recent method use a pad of
piezoelectric or micro fluidic generator placed in humans
shoes. The pad is able to generate electricity during humans
walking and it was shown to be enough for recharging the
batteries for Mobile phones [23].

Figure 5. Mounting of piezoelectric material in an insole [22]
Another application that uses walk movement to generate
energy considers the mounting of the piezoelectric materials in
the floor. In this case, the floor beneath our feet acquires,
accumulates and converts the energy generated by the passage
of people into electricity, rather than applying it to the shoe
[4]. According to studies conducted by [5], each step produces
8W. This power is absorbed by the floor, being possible to
capture at least 30W of that energy. In this context, it is
possible to imagine a dance floor where the floor is designed
to reduce vibration and disperse energy, capturing it and
generating electricity, as it is equipped with energy scavengers
under the surface.
The other innovative idea for harvesting human passive
motion during walking was considered the backpack. Firstly
[24] regarded the vertical movement of backpack to produce
electrical energy. A mechanism was used in this work to allow
a load move vertically relative to frame fixed to the backpack.
In another work the authors considered the significant tension
force in the strap of a backpack [25]. They designed the
energy harvester by replacing the strap buckle with a
mechanically amplified piezoelectric stack actuator, as shown
in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Piezoelectric stack actuator replaced by strap buckle in a normal
wearable backpack [25]
C. Discussion
Among various methods, harvesting energy from the
passive body motions is particularly preferred because it is
more convenient than the active motions. The main problems
with the passive methods include (a) they can generate a small
amount of electricity and (b) the generator could be still
inconvenient. It is critical to optimally address these
constraints in body motion harvesting systems. This is
because, the more convenient the better chance for being used.
Among the different methods for generating electricity for
portable equipment from body passive motions piezoelectric
are common because of efficiency and frequency matching.
There have been some implementations of power generation
based on piezoelectric including electricity from talking,
walking and arm moving. However, they are still inconvenient
and require specific activities such as walking and placing or
removing them in the shoes. Besides, such method will not be
used by a lot of customers because of the possible foot smell
and/or short lifetime of such shoes.
III. ENERGY HARVESTER FROM BREATHING
This section proposes design of a pants belt with an integrated
energy harvesting capability.
A. Breathing and humans stomach pressure
During the respiration, when air moves in and out of our
lungs, the internal pressure of our body changes, accordingly
the size of stomach increased or decreased. When a pant belt
is worn, then it results in an increasing and decreasing
pressure on the belt too. A stomach pressure measured by a
medical breathing rate measurement belt is shown in Figure 7
that is for two cases of after mild exercise and during a rest
measurement [26]. For the case of after a mild exercise, the
pressure varies between 3.4kPa to 4.9kPa with the rate of
0.35Hz, and in the rest case, it varies between 3.2kPa to
4.2kPa with the rate of 0.25Hz. We have developed an image
processing code to separate the curves and digitize them.
These digitized pressure signals are used for simulation
purpose that is presented later in the paper. The comparison
between the pressure and the digitized data is shown in the
Appendix shown at the end of the paper.

Figure 7. Pressure waveforms on the abdomen relative to atmosphere
pressure after mild exercise and at rest [26]
This stomach pressure is applied directly to the belt and
by fabricating a piezoelectric film into the belt. It is possible to
transduce the variation of the pressure to electricity. The
electricity that is generated depends on the specifications of
the transducer, pressure magnitude, frequency, and stomach
shape change during respiration process.
B. Design of the harvester
To design the harvester, we need to determine the size of
piezoelectric film and the location to be mounted to achieve
high efficiency, comfortability and low cost. It is important to
not fabricate piezoelectric film into unstrained surfaces due to
the parasitic effects that declines the harvesters efficiency. To
select the size, we assume a normal pressure applied to the
front half of the belt. An ANSYS model shown in Figure 7 has
been developed to show distribution of strain. This model
shows that only the frontmost part of belt senses high amount
of strain which is selected to determine the size of
piezoelectric transducer. Table 1 shows technical
specifications of the selected transducer.
TABLE I. PIEZOELECTRIC TRANSDUCERS SPECIFICATIONS
Density 1.78 (g/cm
3
)
Relative Permittivity (

) 12
Piezo Strain Constant
d33 -3310
-12
(C/N) or (m/V)
d31 2310
-12
(C/N) or (m/V)
Piezo Stress Constant
e33 -33010
-3
(Vm/N)
e31 21610
-3
(Vm/N)
Electromechanical Coupling Factor (kt) 14 %
Capacitance in surface unit (Co) 380 (pF/cm
2
)
Young Modulus (c or E) 3.110
9
(N/m
2
)
Length (L) 171 (mm)
Width (W) 22 (mm)
Piezo Film Thickness (t) 52 (m)

Figure 8. Distribution of strain on front half of normal pants belt
The piezoelectric transducer is under various
compressions, extension or bending forces. For any case from
the specifications and size of the transducer, it is possible to
calculate the charge and voltage that will be produced. For our
case, a PVDF piezoelectric transducer is placed within a
Dacron-tape pants belt as shown in Figure 9. The piezoelectric
transducer is attached inside the belt and in the place of buckle
because of the higher strain region and the buckle is shifted
accordingly. PVDF piezoelectric is selected here due to its
flexibility in contrast in compare with fragile PZT.

Figure 9. Energy harvesting system from abdominal passive motion using
SOLIDWORKS
PVDF film is also suitable due to wide frequency range
(0.001-10
9
Hz) and dynamic range, low acoustic impedance,
low density and light weight. Among these, the acoustic
impedance is close to humane tissue impedance that results to
more efficient transducing. It is also worth mentioning that the
piezoelectric films properties change when excitation
frequency and temperature change, however these changes are
small for our case, therefore they are neglected.
Since the belt is under regular pressure increase and
decrease, a parallel compression force is applied to the
transducer, and the film is bent due to stomach surface
curvature. This implies the operating modes of 31 and 33 as
shown in Figure 10. However due to the fact that small area
results in a correspondingly higher stress for the same value of
pressure, the mode 31 produces higher charge and voltage
than mode 33.

Figure 10. Piezoelectric elements and operating modes
If a parallel or perpendicular force in mode 3n is applied to
the transducer, then the charge and open-circuit voltage are
obtained by:

(2)

(3)
In these equations

is the stress due to applied pressure

in n-direction (n=1, 3), is the charge density, is charge,

is the open-circuit voltage, and the other parameters were

previously introduced in Table 1.
The open-circuit voltages for a model of respirational
abdominal pressure are depicted in Figure 11 that are for the
rest and after mild exercise, respectively.

Figure 11. Open-Circuit voltage waveforms for two cases of at rest (top) and
after mild exercise (bottom) pressure
When designing a harvester system, there are other
considerations that need to be addressed including: generated
power, optimal power transmission to the load, the application
such as direct consumption or battery charging and power
loss. If a normal or axial force is applied on piezoelectric film,
the film acts like a capacitor; the open-circuit energy produced
is:

(4)
Where

is the power and is the equivalent capacitance that

can be obtained directly from the capacitance in surface unit
shown in Table I or from:

(5)
Where

is relative permittivity,

is absolute permittivity
and the other parameters describe the size of piezoelectric film
introduced in Table 1. The relevant capacitances obtained
from both methods are nearly the same and it equals to 14.3nF
for our case. Due to the low frequencies of the abdominal
motions, the generated voltage is equivalent DC voltage
generator. A simple model of the harvesting system is shown
in Figure 12.

Figure 12. Scheme of Piezoelectric film inclined by stomach shape form and
the equivalent RC Circuit
By this model, the harvester acts as a high pass filter and
as a result of that there will be a cut-off frequency given by:

(6)
By assuming R
L
to be large enough, the open-circuit
voltage will be close to the load voltage. However taking into
consideration the low frequency of abdominal motion, the
open-circuit voltage is:

(7)
Broadly speaking, by measuring the voltage on the load
and figuring the

and substituting it in (4) the power

extracted from piezoelectric film can be calculated. However,
due to the power loss on passive components, a portion of this
power is transferred to the load. Table 2 shows the average
voltage and power of the open circuit (V
o
and P
o
) and load (V
L

and P
L
) in the case of using a resistive load (

).
TABLE II. AVERAGE VALUES FOR USING RESISTIVE LOAD
Applied
Pressure
VL (V) Vo (V) PL (uW) Po (uW)
Power
Efficiency
At Rest
( )
2.2 6.3 5.1 28.3 18%
After Mild
Exercise
( )
4.3 10.8 18.5 83.4 23%
From this table it can be seen that by increasing operating
frequency towards resonance frequency that is normally large
, the harvested power and power efficiency will be increased.
In the next step an interface circuit is used to convert the semi-
AC current of the transducer to a DC signal. In this work a
self-powered interface circuit is used as shown in Figure 13.
The proposed Proteus circuit is compact with low energy
dissipation and produces a 3.3VDC.

Figure 13. Compact and self-powered interface circuit to provide 3.3 VDC
The LTC3588-1 used here is an ultralow quiescent current
power supply that integrates a low-loss full-wave bridge
rectifier with a high efficiency buck converter [27].
IV. MODELING AND SIMULATION
In this section a detailed mathematical and simulation model
of the belt harvester is introduced. As was mentioned earlier,
the piezoelectric film is under bending and compression forces
and mode 31 dominates the mode 33. Detailed modeling will
help to validate this fact as well.
For the piezoelectric film shaped in the belt of Figure 13,
the abdominal pressure produced the strain in 1-direction of:

(8)
Where is the angle of film deflection caused by stomachs
curvature and length of the film, P is the pressure magnitude
and the other parameters were explained in Table 1. We
obtained the value of

for an 85cm waist that is

used for this study. When considering the more effective mode
(1-direction), then the produced charge displacement is:

(9)
The parameters in this equation were introduced in section
2. After integration over the thickness and with the assumption
that D
3
(I), E
3
(V), and S all are set in the same frequency rate
( ), the voltage is obtained by:

(8)
And so the average value of power will be obtained by:

||

(9)
Figure 14 shows the variation of average power versus
different resistive loads for two cases of at rest and after mild
exercise.

Figure 14. Average of extracted power for different resistive loads in two
cases of at rest and after mild exercise
From this figure, with the optimum resistive loads the
maximum power that could be extracted are 1.2 and 2.3mW
for the rest and after mild exercise, respectively. Accordingly,
the magnitude of voltage depends on resistance value as stated
by (8). For instance the average voltages for a 1 resistive
load are 7.4V and 11.7V for the rest and after mild exercise,
respectively.
The method used to obtain the voltages and powers does
not consider the power loss in the elements that exists in
practice and therefore a difference is observed between
theoretical and practical solution. On the other hand due to
high impedance of piezoelectric element, the produced voltage
tends to be orders of magnitude more than the induced current
as predicted before. Under this circumstance use of the
conditioning circuit is essential for optimal power
transmission.
This model has been simulated in Matlab Simulink in
order to analyze the operation detail of the system and for
future improving of the design performed in this paper. The
simulation model consists of three stages of humans
abdominal motions model, the belt and piezoelectricity effect
model and the interface circuit as shown in Figure 15.

Figure 15. Simulink model of proposed energy harvesting system
Humans Abdominal Motions Model: This part of the model
shown by blue region in Figure 15 uses a digitized table of
pressure values corresponding to the pressure curve of Figure
7. The digitization method was explained earlier and the
matching of it with the actual pressures is shown in the
Appendix. These pressure data are the P1 and P2 bus line of
Simulink model and the simulation of the them are shown in
Figure 16-first scope.
0 50 100 150
0
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
Resistive Load (MOhms)
E
x
t
r
a
c
t
e
d

P
o
w
e
r

(
m
W
)


At Rest
After Mild Exercise

Figure 16. Pressure, voltage and power curves from the first and second parts
of simulation model-for the rest (lower) and after mild exercise (upper)
and 1 resistive load
Belt and Piezoelectric Effect Model: The model of the belt and
the piezoelectric film is based on the equations 6-9. The
voltage and power of this model with the actual pressure data
of Figure 7 are shown in Figure 16 in the second and third
scope.
Harvester Circuit: The Simulink model of the harvester circuit
was displayed in Figure 15 which is the green block. Using the
simulation model of this section we have observed that a
3.3VDC was provided by this harvester circuit after a very
short fluctuation and the average of power is specified by the
value of resistive load that is 1 in the Simulink model.
V. CONCLUSION
This paper discussed existing methods of energy
harvesting from humans body motion and introduced a novel
system for harvesting energy from abdominal motion. The
presented method allowed the harvesting to occur from
completely passive motion with an special focus on the user-
friendliness of the harvester.
The harvester was designed by integrating a PVDF
piezoelectric transduced with a normal pants belt after
calculating the maximum strain region of the belt. The system
including piezoelectric transducer was modeled by Matlab and
the results showed that it can provide up to 1.2mW in rest time
and 2.3mW after mild exercise time. This amount of energy is
sufficient to power an mp3 player or IMD.
Acknowledgement: This research is fully funded by the
Centre for intelligent systems research as the IP holder.
Appendix: The below figure shows the digitized pressure
curves for the rest and mild exercise using an image
processing method. In the image processing method, we
selected a curve and filtered in, then read the pixel and scaled
it to the range of the time and pressure as shown in Figure 17.

Figure 17. Digitized pressures (left side images) using the image processing method and matching of it with the image data (right side figures)
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