Photovoltaic Cells for Energy Harvesting and Step Counting

As the number of IoT devices grows, the demand for energy-free sensing becomes necessary. Step counting is one of the most valuable contexts for many human-centric applications. However, most of the sensing modalities of today's wearable devices consume energy, limiting their sustainable adoption. In this demo, we propose an energy-free computationally-efficient step counting system using photovoltaic cells. Specifically, the system leverages a foot-mounted photovoltaic cell as a sensing modality for step detection and energy source simultaneously. The system is designed to track the steps of an unlimited number of users in different environments under various ambient light conditions.