A Gear-Driven Plantar Energy Harvester with Integrated Self-Sensing for Human Locomotion Recognition

Wearable electronic systems require compact and sustainable power sources together with reliable motion-sensing functions. This study presents a gear-driven plantar energy harvester that integrates biomechanical energy conversion with self-sensing locomotion recognition. The device converts low-frequency vertical foot loading into rotary motion through a wedge–lever transmission and amplifies the rotational speed using a multistage gear train with a total transmission ratio of 12. A one-way bearing enables directional power transmission during loading and prevents reverse rotation during recovery. The generated voltage serves both as the electrical output and as the sensing signal for locomotion recognition. Human-subject experiments were conducted under six locomotion modes: walking at 1, 2 and 3 m/s; running; ascending; and descending. Voltage signals were sampled at 2000 Hz and segmented into overlapping sequences. A CNN–LSTM model was used to extract local waveform features and temporal dependencies from the nonstationary signals. The model achieved an overall recognition accuracy of 98.8%, with most errors occurring between ascending and descending. The results demonstrate that a single plantar device can simultaneously harvest biomechanical energy and provide motion-related information, offering a compact solution for integrated energy harvesting and self-sensing in wearable systems.