Technology promises biometric gait recognition for battery-free wearables

The technology is thought to have particular promise for the rapidly growing wearable healthcare market – where energy consumption and security of data are both major issues.

Current gait recognition systems work by gathering motion and velocity information from accelerometers worn by the user. However, the relatively high power consumption of accelerometer sampling has made it challenging to adopt gait recognition for wearables.

What’s more, whilst kinetic energy harvesting systems have long been seen as an attractive alternative to batteries for some applications they typically only generate tens to hundreds of microwatts of electricity, which is nowhere near enough to power accelerometer sampling.

The proposed solution, developed by CSIRO’S data innovation research division Data61 dispenses with sensors altogether, and instead monitors the output voltages of a Kinetic Energy Harvester. According to a paper on the project, the output from this device, which uses the piezoelectric effect to translate a user’s motion into electrical energy, corresponds to the unique walking pattern of an individual. The resulting system is claimed to reduce energy consumption by almost 80 per cent.