A Smart Cycling Platform for Textile-Based Sensing and Wireless Power Transfer in Smart Cities

Abstract

This paper proposes an integrated smart cycling system for assisted cycling, energy harvesting and wireless power transfer systems on a bicycle, an enabling platform for autonomous e-textiles-based sensing. The cyclist is assisted by a switched reluctance motor, which also acts as a switched reluctance generator that harvests a peak power of 7.5 W, at 10% efficiency during cycling to power on body sensors. To demonstrate wearable on-body sensing, a thin flexible CO2 gas sensor filament, which can be woven in fabric, is presented and evaluated. Wearable inductive resonant wireless power transfer (WPT) is achieved using textile embroidered coils on the bicycle’s handle and cycling gloves, achieving more than 80% WPT efficiency from the bicycle to the cyclist’s clothing, useful for powering mobile on-body sensors.