Footfall Energy: Potential and Reality (Energy Harvesting and Storage Europe 2011)

James Gilbert received his bachelor's degree in electronic engineering from the University of Hull in 1986 and then completed a PhD on nonlinear control of a robot manipulator at the same university in 1989. Since then he has worked as a lecturer and senior lecturer in the Department of Engineering at the University of Hull. He has worked in energy harvesting technologies for over 10 years with particular focus on footfall energy, self-tuning vibration harvesters and the use of energy harvesting to power medical sensors.

The Department of Engineering at the University of Hull applies expertise in electronic and mechanical engineering to research problems in medical engineering and in energy, environment and sustainable systems. Energy harvesting research is focussed on the use of piezoelectric and electromagnetic generation for vibration and human sourced energy and in the application of energy harvesting to wireless sensor networks and to medical sensors.