UCLA

As we are quickly heading towards a trillion device Internet-of-Thing (IoT), it becomes crucial to develop zero-maintenance and long-life ubiquitous IoT systems, eliminating the need for batteries and maintenance. To address this issue, researchers have been investigating harvesting energy from various ambient energy sources, such as sunlight, thermal gradients, and RF sources, to power IoT devices and enable self-sustainability. In this thesis, we explored generating power from a unique energy source – user interactions, and utilized the power to enhance the actuation and sensing capabilities of IoT devices. We investigated the characteristics of interaction energy from everyday objects and the factors that affect them. We designed a wide variety of mechanical mechanisms that are retrofittable to everyday objects to harvest kinematic energy from user interactions. To perform IoT sensing and actuation, we equipped them with motors capable of alternating between harvester and actuator for motorization, and computationally designed retro-reflectors for wireless backscatter. We evaluated both systems with deployment studies, which proved the efficacy of our systems as well as shedding light into this interaction-powered approach as a feasible solution to address energy needed for IoT applications.