The Design of a 2-DOF Inertial Motion Harvester for a

Mechanical Watch

E.C. Buiter
Supervisors:
Paul Breedveld
Delft University of Technology

Nima Tolou
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 The Design of a 2-DOF Inertial
Motion Harvester for a Mechanical
Watch

By

E.C. Buiter

in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Science
in Biomedical Engineering

at the Delft University of Technology,

to be defended publicly on Friday January 24, 2014 at 2:00 PM.

Student number: 1316117

Thesis committee:
Prof. Dr. P.Breedveld, BMechE, 3ME
Dr. N. Tolou, PME, Mechatonic Systems Design, 3ME
Dr. Ir. G. Smit, BMechE, 3ME
Dr. Ir. J.F.L. Goosen, Structural Optimization an Mechanics, PME,3ME

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 When we come to inspect the watch, we perceive (…) that its several parts are
framed and put together for a purpose, e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as
to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day;
that if the different parts had been differently shaped from what they are, or a
different size from what they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any other
order, than that in which they are placed, either no motion at all would have been
carried on in the machine, or none which would have answered the use that is now
served by it. To reckon with a few of the plainest parts, and of their offices, all tending
to one result:
We see a cylindrical box containing a coiled elastic spring, which, by its endeavour
to relax itself, turns round the box. We next observe a flexible chain (artificially
wrought for the sake of flexure) communicating the action of the spring from the
box to the fusee. We then find a series of wheels, the teeth of which catch in, and
apply to, each other, conducting the motion from the fuse to the balance, and from
the balance to the pointer; and at the same time, by the size and shape of those
wheels, so regulating that motion, as to terminate in causing an index, by an equable
and measured progression, to pass over a given pace in a given time. We take notice
that the wheels are made of brass, in order to keep them from rust; the springs of
steel, no other metal being so elastic; that over the face of the watch there is placed
a glass, a material employed in no other part of the work, but, in the room of which,
if there had been any other than a transparent substance, the hour could not been
seen without opening the case. This mechanism being observed (it requires indeed
an examination of the instrument, and perhaps some previous knowledge of the
subject, to perceive and understand it; but being once, as we have said, observed
and understood), the inference, we think, is inevitable; that the watch must have had
a maker; that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an
artificer of artificers who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to
answer; who comprehends its construction, and designed its use.
William Paley (Natural Theology, 1882)

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PREFACE
In the book Natural Theology, published in 1882, William Paley marvels at the intricately complex
interweaving of the parts of a mechanical watch and argues that living organisms, since they are
similarly complicated and perfected, must also have a designer and sees this as proof of the existence
of God. It is this same interest for this complicated and delicate mechanism, that after more than 6
months of work I find myself with my graduation thesis called “The Design of a 2-DOF Inertial Motion
Harvester for a Mechanical Watch”.

With the master Biomedical Engineering at the TU Delft the final year consists of three parts. The
first part is a three month internship. For this internship I performed a study into the quantitative
analysis of communication in an operating room during an open heart surgery, at the Leiden University
Medical Centre. After this I sat down with my graduation supervisors and we decided that my
graduation project would consist of the redesign of a part of the wrist watch – the automatic winding
device. In anticipation of ending up with a complex three dimensional structure, during my three month
literature study I looked into the opportunities within additive manufacturing (also known as 3D-
printing). After finishing my report “Additive Manufacturing for Precision Engineering” I spent the last
six months on my graduation thesis. It was an interesting project combining my knowledge of design,
my interest in mechanical watches and the theory on energy harvesting. The result of my graduation
thesis is what lies before you now.

I would like to thank Paul for his help and frequent conversations during my graduation. I would like
to thank Nima for his help with the project and the opportunities he gave me, including the visit to
Zurich. Furthermore I would like to thank everybody who tried to teach me about the modelling and
simulation of my design, especially Teun for the amount of time he put into my project.

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Content
Preface.......................................................................................................................................................7
Abstract ...................................................................................................................................................11
1. Introduction.....................................................................................................................................11
Energy Harvesting ...................................................................................................................... 11
Automatic winding device .......................................................................................................... 12
Problem definition...................................................................................................................... 12
Goal of the study ........................................................................................................................ 12
Layout of the study..................................................................................................................... 13
2. Background on energy harvesting...................................................................................................13
Introduction................................................................................................................................ 13
1-DOF inertial harvesters – working principle............................................................................ 13
Linear generator ..................................................................................................................... 13
Rotational generator .............................................................................................................. 14
1-DOF inertial harvesters – functional parts .............................................................................. 14
Directions of improvement ........................................................................................................ 15
3. Wrist motion measurements ..........................................................................................................15
Introduction................................................................................................................................ 15
Method ....................................................................................................................................... 15
Wrist motion during daily activities ....................................................................................... 15
Measuring device ................................................................................................................... 15
Tasks ....................................................................................................................................... 16
Procedure ............................................................................................................................... 16
Data preparation .................................................................................................................... 17
Data analysis........................................................................................................................... 17
Results ........................................................................................................................................ 18
Wrist motion during the day .................................................................................................. 18
Principle components............................................................................................................. 18
Resonant frequencies ............................................................................................................. 19
Present accelerations ............................................................................................................. 19
Discussion ................................................................................................................................... 19
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 20
4. 2-DOF inertial harvester design.......................................................................................................21
Design direction.......................................................................................................................... 21
Method ....................................................................................................................................... 21
Requirements ............................................................................................................................. 21
Requirements based on integration with an automatic wrist watch .................................... 21

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 Requirements based on the working principle of the motion harvester ............................... 22
Conceptual design ...................................................................................................................... 22
Dimensional design .................................................................................................................... 23
Link lengths and location of rotation points .......................................................................... 23
Link thickness.......................................................................................................................... 25
Size of the proof mass ............................................................................................................ 26
Rotation transfer .................................................................................................................... 26
Discussion ................................................................................................................................... 26
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 27
5. Evaluation ....................................................................................................................................... 27
Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 27
Fulfilment of the requirements .................................................................................................. 27
Proof of principle ........................................................................................................................ 28
Method ................................................................................................................................... 28
Results .................................................................................................................................... 29
Prototype .................................................................................................................................... 31
Discussion ................................................................................................................................... 32
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 33
6. General Discussion ......................................................................................................................... 33
Implementation in a mechanical wrist watch ............................................................................ 33
Recommendations...................................................................................................................... 33
7. General Conclusion......................................................................................................................... 34
Bibliography............................................................................................................................................ 35
Appendix I – Background on the automatic winding device .................................................................. 36
Appendix II – Background on the harvesting principle .......................................................................... 38
Appendix III – Background on data analysis ........................................................................................... 39
Appendix IV – Watch sizes and ETA........................................................................................................ 40
Appendix V – Analysis of bar mechanisms ............................................................................................. 41
Appendix VI – Methods for simulating mechanism motion ................................................................... 42
Appendix VII – Technical drawings of the final design ........................................................................... 44

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THE DESIGN OF A 2-DOF INERTIAL MOTION HARVESTER
FOR A MECHANICAL WATCH
ABSTRACT
Energy harvesters extract energy from the ambient environment and can power electronic devices.
One interesting application of these harvesters is the medical field where in the future they might be
used to power pacemakers or medicine pumps. One common energy harvester is the automatic wrist
watch, a one Degree of Freedom (DOF) rotational inertial motion harvester. When attached to a
generator, the automatic winding device has shown to harvest 50 µW. However, an increase in
harvested power is necessary for it to be applicable for other devices. Knowing that wrist motion occurs
in different directions, the goal of this study was to design a multi-DOF harvester for a mechanical watch
in order to increase the harvesting power. To achieve this goal, firstly measurements of wrist motion
during daily activities were performed. Based on the collected wrist motion, the harvestable content of
the motion and the principle components of the motion were analyzed. We showed that a correctly
orientated energy harvester with the size of a wrist watch can harvest most of the wrist motion
(containing > 90 % of the total variance) by harvesting from only two translations. The correct
orientation of the harvester is rotated almost 90 degrees from the original plane. Based on these results
a 2-DOF harvester was designed to harvest two translations. The 2-DOF harvester transforms the
translations into two rotations which are then used to wind two mainsprings. A simulation performed
to evaluate the 2-DOF harvester for three different accelerations using a model without friction, shows
an increase of energy harvested for the new harvester of 36 - 98 %. These results give a good indication
of improved performance when compared to the original 1-DOF harvester. A prototype of the design
was made from acrylic sheets using a laser cutter. This prototype, manufactured at true scale, shows
that the 2-DOF energy harvester can be produced and shows a response similar to the expected
response.
Keywords: Energy harvester, mechanical watch, human motion.

Rechargeable devices require the patient to

1. INTRODUCTION
ENERGY HARVESTING
There is an increasing demand for portable
electronic devices, autonomous systems and
health and environmental monitoring devices [1].
The reduction in size and power consumption of
these devices has led to the idea of replacing
batteries with on-site power generators [2,3].
These generators, also called energy harvesters,
extract energy from the ambient environment
[4]. One very interesting application area of micro
energy harvesters is the medical field where
electronic portable devices are becoming more
common. Examples are pacemakers, medicine
pumps and health monitoring devices. These all
depend on electricity to work and are usually
powered by batteries that are either
rechargeable or need to be replaced. For a
pacemaker this means that a surgery is required
every 5-10 years to replace the pacemaker.
regularly schedule time for charging, limiting their
freedom. Continuously powering these devices
with human motion will eliminate these
problems.
One of the most common energy harvesters
that is used these days is worn on the wrist; the
automatic mechanical wrist watch. For electrical
harvesting the wrist is not usually considered as a
good location due to the low amounts of motion
in low frequency ranges [5, 6]. However,
theoretically the wrist should provide enough
motion to harvest almost 1 mW, enough to power
a hearing aid [7, 8]. Also it is an ideal place for an
information display of a health monitoring
device, as is currently used in sports heart rate
monitors. It is also the location where people
wear watches or jewelry and are therefore
accustomed to extra weight, minimizing the
interference of the weight of the harvester with
the motion. For these reasons the focus of this
study is the automatic winding device.

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 AUTOMATIC WINDING DEVICE
Mechanical wrist watches use power that is
stored in the mainspring to drive a movement
that regulates the time indication. Since the
movement uses energy, the mainspring needs to
be wound regularly. A mechanism designed to
use human motion to wind the mainspring was
first seen in the 18th century but was not taken
into production until the early 20th century [9]:
the automatic winding device, as seen in Figure 1.
The automatic winding device harvests energy
from wrist motion and stores this as potential
energy in the mainspring to power the watch, it is
therefore an energy harvester. The wrist motion
is captured by the rotor, due to the inertia of the
rotor. The rotor is an asymmetric oscillating
weight with one Degree of Freedom (DOF). The
energy is then transmitted through the reverser
and reduction gear train and used to wind up the
mainspring, seen in Figure 2. A more detailed
explanation of the automatic winding device can
be found in Appendix I.
of an automatic winding device to power
other electronic devices has been suggested
before [10, 11] and an automatic winding device
was found to harvest enough energy for cardiac
stimulation [12]. No study was found that looked
at the maximal power generation of the
automatic winding device, but a quartz watch and
pacemaker use 5 µW and 50 µW respectively [8].
However, it is doubted that the current automatic
winding device has the harvesting capacity to
power a hearing aid (1 mW) [8]. An increase in
harvester capacity of the automatic winding
device will lead to a broader range of
applications, but requires a new design that does
not have the same limitations as the current
motion harvester.
Figure 1 – An automatic wrist watch movement. Source:
tagheuer.com
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PROBLEM DEFINITION
The rotor is an asymmetric weight that rotates
around a central point, seen in Figure 3. It
therefore has one Degree of Freedom (DOF). The
watch is a planar device and therefore
experiences motion in three DOF; two
translations and one rotation. For optimal energy
harvesting the automatic winding device should
be able to harvest motion from these three DOF.
The current rotor however, has some aspects that
limit the motions it harvests. The first aspect is
the singular positions of the rotor, when the rotor
does not respond to certain motions. These
singularities occur when the motion is along the
arm of the rotor. Two of these positions are
indicated in Figure 4. Secondly, when the
acceleration is not directed along the path of the
rotor, the motion is not optimally harvested, as
indicated in Figure 5. These observations result in
the conclusion that the rotor is built to harvest
mainly the rotation and in a lesser degree the two
translations.
GOAL OF THE STUDY
Change in material and shape of the oscillating
weight, reduction in friction and the change from
unidirectional to bidirectional harvesting have
been used to improve the effectiveness of the
automatic winding device [9]. However,
considering the problems with the current rotor
and the observation that the current automatic
winding device is designed to harvest mainly
rotations, we propose a different direction for
improvement of the harvesting capacity. Since
the wrist moves in 6 degrees of freedom,
harvesting from multiple directions of freedom
will allow the harvesting of more energy. The goal
of this study is therefore to design an inertial
motion harvester for a mechanical wrist watch
that harvests energy from multiple DOF. However
Figure 2 – An exploded view of an automatic winding device
with the three main parts. Adapted from network54.com
more DOF will also complicate the mechanism
and the directions of the DOF that contain most
energy are unknown. The goal of this study will
therefore be achieved in three steps. Firstly a
measurement will be made of the wrist motion to
find the directions of motion and the number of
DOF that need to be harvested. Secondly the new
motion harvester will be designed based on the
findings of the measurements. Finally the design
will be validated.
LAYOUT OF THE STUDY
During this study the method and results of
the design of the motion harvester are described.
First, in Chapter 2, background information on
the working principles of energy harvesters will
be given to find possibilities for improvement. To
find the optimal orientation of the harvester a
study was performed to analyse the motions of
the wrist, which is described in Chapter 3. The
design process of the motion harvester and the
final design will be described in Chapter 4. In
Chapter 5 the performance of the new motion
harvester will be evaluated. To finalize, in Chapter
6 an overall discussion of the study and
recommendations for future studies will be given.
Chapter 7 will contain the overall conclusion of
this study.
2. BACKGROUND ON ENERGY HARVESTING
INTRODUCTION
Not much research has been performed
concerning motion energy harvesters that store
mechanical energy. However, elaborate studies
have been performed to describe energy
harvesters that use motion to generate electrical
energy, known as microgenerators [13, 14]. In
general harvesting energy results in damping of
the system and the assumption is made that this
also happens in the automatic winding device.
Secondly, there is also a spring in the automatic
Figure 3 – A representation of the rotor Figure 4 – Two of the singular positions
inside the automatic winding device as of the rotor for the indicated
a weight connected to the rotation accelerations.
point by a rigid link.
winding device, therefore the models for
microgenerators can be used to analyse the
working principle of an automatic winding device.
The working principle of an energy harvester is
described more simply and elaborately in
Appendix II.
Since the automatic winding device harvests
motion, this is a motion-driven harvester. In one
of the classifications there are two types of
motion-driven harvesters; force-driven and
inertial-driven. While both generators are
powered by motion, the difference is found in the
attachment of the proof mass. Force-driven
harvesters have a connection between the
outside world and the proof mass. Therefore the
proof mass is directly actuated by the motion of
the outside world. In inertial-driven harvesters
the proof mass is attached to the frame of the
generator. These rely on the inertia of the proof
mass to achieve a relative motion of the mass
with respect to the generators frame [13]. From
this description the automatic winding device can
be classified as an inertial-driven harvester.
1-DOF INERTIAL HARVESTERS – WORKING
PRINCIPLE
Linear generator
The generic model of a inertial driven
generator can be seen in Figure 6. A proof mass
m is supported on a suspension with stiffness k.
When the frame experiences a linear harmonic
acceleration, with a displacement y(t), the inertia
of the proof mass results is a relative
displacement z(t). The maximal displacement of
the proof mass is 2 times ZL as can be seen in
Figure 6. When work is done against the damping
force f(𝑧̇ ), energy is converted. During a motion
with a frequency ω and a displacement Yo the
force on the harvester is F = 𝜔2 Y0 m. The power
that is harvested can be calculated as the product
of the force acting on the harvester and the
Figure 5 – The smaller influence of the
translational accelerations on the
movement of the rotor.
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 Table I – The three functional parts of an inertial energy harvester with examples of two different energy harvesters.
Automatic winding device Rotor
Electromagnetic harvester Magnet
maximal displacement 2ZL. Dividing this with the
period of the motion 2π/ω will result in the
maximal harvested power. This theoretically
maximal power does not take into account the
time it takes the proof mass to move from one
position to the next. Therefore a correction factor
is necessary to account for this delay. Analysis of
a true case shows that this correction factor is
π/4. The end result is shown in Equation 1
[13, 14].
𝑚𝜔3 𝑌0 𝑍𝐿
𝑃𝑚𝑎𝑥 = (1)
2 divided into three functional parts: the motion
Rotational generator
A similar model can be derived for the
automatic winding device. The model can be seen
in Figure 7. The proof mass m rotates around a
fixed point at a distance r, the size of the link. The
winding of the mainspring with stiffness k and the
harvesting of the motion will result in damping
f(𝜃̇). In this simple model these are positioned at
the rotation point. When the frame experiences a
linear excitation y(t), the inertia of the proof mass
(I = m r2) will result in a rotation relative to the
frame. Maximal harvesting is given by Equation 2
[14]. The excitation of wrist motion is usually
larger than the possible excitation of the proof
mass within a wrist watch. Due to this limitation
a resonant system will not increase the power
harvested [14].
𝑚𝜔3 𝑌0 𝑟
𝑃𝑚𝑎𝑥 = (2)
2
Figure 6 – A generic model of a 1-DOF linear inertial driven
energy harvester. Adapted from [13].
14
Reverser and gear train Mainspring
Magnet & coil Battery or capacitor
As can be seen Equations 1 and 2 are equal for
r =ZL (within the assumptions and approximations
of these equations). Therefore it can be said that
the power harvested by an inertial-driven energy
harvester for linear motion is the same for a linear
or rotating inertial-driven harvester [14]. It should
be noted that this is the theoretical maximum for
both linear and rotational inertial-driven energy
harvesters and is in practice not reached.
1-DOF INERTIAL HARVESTERS – FUNCTIONAL PARTS
Each inertial-driven energy harvester can be
harvester, the energy converter and the energy
storage. This is illustrated in Table I with two
examples, the automatic winding device and an
electromagnetic motion harvester. The motion
harvester is the part that responds to the motion
of the frame. It is usually a proof mass and will
obtain a relative motion. Due to this relative
motion the energy converter will be able to
convert this motion into usable energy. This
energy is then stored. Even though
improvements are possible within the energy
converter and energy storage of the automatic
winding device, there are sufficient solutions
available in the current watches [9,10]. The
current solutions are further explained in
Appendix I. Since there is much improvement to
be gained in the design of the motion harvester
and no studies have focused on this part, the
focus of this study will be on the motion
harvester.
Figure 7 – A model of a 1-DOF rotational inertial driven energy
harvester. Adapted from [14].
 DIRECTIONS OF IMPROVEMENT
Since we want to design a harvester that
harvests from two translations, a new motion
harvester must be designed. Equations 1 and 2
are used to analyze variables that influence the
maximal power Pmax:
 𝑚; a larger proof mass will result in a higher
force that can be harvested;
 The weight of the proof mass can be
maximized. This is however limited by the
size of the watch and the weight that can
be comfortably worn on a wrist.
 𝜔3 𝑌0; larger accelerations on the harvester
will lead to more harvested power;
 The accelerations are defined by the wrist
motion and cannot be increased,
 However, it is not known in which direction
the accelerations are largest. Orientation
of the harvester in the direction of maximal
motion will result in the largest possible
accelerations to be harvested,
 Allowing the harvester to harvest from
motion in multiple directions allows the
harvester to harvest from more
accelerations.
 ZL or r; for maximal harvesting the
displacement of the proof mass must be
maximal;
 Optimizing the system that links the proof
mass and the energy converter to have
maximal freedom in displacement within
the boundary allows for more
displacement,
 Increasing the boundary to maximize the
working space of the mechanism will
increase displacement, however this is
defined by the size of the wrist watch.
The direction of maximal wrist motion is
unknown. Therefore firstly wrist measurements
must be performed to find the optimal number of
degrees of freedom to harvest from and the
optimal direction of orientation of the harvester.
Secondly a new design must be made for the
motion harvester allowing it as much freedom in
motion as possible from the selected number of
degrees of freedom.
3. WRIST MOTION MEASUREMENTS
INTRODUCTION
Before the new multi-DOF motion harvester
can be designed, the orientation of the harvester
must be optimized to be able to harvest from
most motion in the direction of the selected DOF
plane. To this end, measurements of wrist
motion will be performed. During these
measurements velocities and accelerations of
wrist motion will be recorded. Measurements of
selected activities were performed, where after
the data was weighed with the time spent on
activities with similar wrist motion during an
entire day. The data can then be used to find the
optimal orientation and design requirements for
the multi-DOF harvester.
METHOD
Wrist motion during daily activities
A public database called the Multinational
Time Use Study was used to find the average time
spent performing daily activities [15]. From this
database the World 5.8 - adult summary file was
used for this study. This dataset contains diary
entries from more than 480 000 people in
11 different countries and recognizes 69 different
activities performed in daily life. Examples of
these activities are cooking, walking and sleeping.
All 69 activities can be seen in Table II. For this
study these 69 activities were divided into 4 wrist
motion categories: no (none or barely any
motion), low (comparable to motion during
typing), medium (walking) and high (running)
motion of the wrist. For these four categories the
percentage of the day spent performing these
activities (𝑃𝑎 ) was calculated.
Measuring device
Accelerometers have proven to be a reliable
measuring tool for human motion during daily
activities [16]. For this study the accelerometer
was required to: be tri-axial and measure
translation and rotation (6 DOF), operate in an
ambient environment and measure frequencies
between 0.2 and 10 Hz [17]. To minimize the
z
y
x
Figure 8 – The sensor attached to the wrist, with the
measurement axes local to the sensors orientation.
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 Table II – Assignment of activities of the Multinational Time Use Study database to the four categories used in this study.
Wrist motion category Multinational Time Use Study activity number and activity description
5. Meals at work or at school
Low 6. Other meals or snacks
(typing) 11. Travel as a part of work
12. Work breaks
13. Other time at workplace
14. Look for work
15. Regular schooling, education
16. Homework
17. leisure/other education or training
25. Consume personal care services
26. Consume other services
29. Teach, help with homework
34. Worship or religious activity
44. Cycling
49. Conversation
1. Imputed personal or household care
Medium 4. Wash, dress and care for self
(walking) 7. Paid job – main job (not at home)
8. Paid work at home
9. Second or other job not at home
10. Unpaid work to generate household
income
18. Food preparation, cooking
19. Set table, wash/put away dishes
20. Cleaning
21. Laundry, ironing, clothing repair
22. Home/vehicle maintenance/
improvement
23. Other domestic work
24. Purchase good
27. Pet care
28. Physical, medical child care
High (running) 42. General sport or exercise
2. Sleep and naps
None (or barely any 3. Imputed sleep
motion) 37. Cinema, theatre, opera, concert
55. Relax, think, do nothing
56. Read
influence on the subject’s motion the sensor had
to be lightweight, small and wireless. Fulfilling all
of these requirements, the MTw inertial motion
tracker (Xsens Technologies BV, Enschede, NL)
was selected for this study. The sensor measures
three orthogonal components of the velocity,
acceleration and the angular velocity separately.
The axes are local to the sensor and are indicated
in Figure 8.
Tasks
To measure the daily wrist motion of a wide
range of people in a short period of time, three
activities were selected that fit into the three
wrist motion categories: “low motion”, “medium
motion” and “high motion”. Since there is no
wrist motion in the category “no motion” no
activity was selected and this category was not
16
50. Other in-home social, games
51. General indoor leisure
52. Artistic or musical activity
53. Written correspondence
60. Playing computer games
61. Send e-mail, surf internet, computing
62. No activity but mode of recorded travel
63. Travel to or from work
64. Education-related travel
65. Travel for voluntary/civic/religious activity
66. Child/adult care-related travel
67. Travel for shopping, personal or
household care
68. Travelling for other purposes
30. Read to, talk or play with child
31. Supervise, accompany, other child care
32. Adult care
33. Voluntary work, civic, organization activity
35. General out-of-home leisure
36. Attending sport event
38. Other public event, venue
39. Restaurant, café, bar, pub
40. Party, reception, social event, gambling
41. Imputed time away from home
43. Walking
45. Other out-of-doors recreation
46. Gardening/forage, hunt/fish
47. Walk dogs
48. Receive or visit friends
54. Knit, crafts or hobbies
57. Listen to music, CD, audio book
58. Listen to radio
59. Watch TV, DVD, video
69. No recorded activity
measured. The requirements for the activities
were repetitive motion, clearly definable and
common during an average day. The three
activities were selected based on the wrist
motion categories: typing, walking and running. A
fixed track had to be followed during walking and
running. A piece of predefined text needed to be
copied during typing.
Procedure
The experiment was conducted with ten
healthy volunteers (8 male and 2 female, aged
21-25 years). A single MTw sensor was attached
to the dominant arm (8 right and 2 left handed)
at the location where a watch is worn, seen in
Figure 8, using the MTw click-in forearm strap. It
should be noted that this strap resulted in a low
pass filter. However, considering the low
frequencies expected from wrist motion, this low
pass filter was of negligible influence. The
subjects performed all three tasks for 60 seconds
at their own preferred speed and were instructed
before the measurement. The task sequence was:
walking, then typing, followed by running. This
sequence was repeated three times. A short rest
was allowed after each sequence. The sampling
rate of the measurements was 75 Hz.
Data preparation
The first ten seconds of the recorded signal
were removed to account for the time it takes the
subjects to settle into the movement, leaving a
50 second signal. The x and z directions are the
same for left and right handed subjects, but the
y direction points outwards for right handed and
inwards for left handed subjects. Therefore, the
data of the y-axis of the left handed was inverted.
The three trials of the ten subjects were lined up
resulting in a dataset of 3 x 10 x 50 = 1500 seconds
for each activity. Each dataset contained the
measurements of the three translations and
three rotations.
Data analysis
Both translations and rotations work on the
mechanism. For a small range of motion of the
proof mass we can state that the energy from a
rotation and a translation can be compared by
using the relative kinetic energy per unit mass
Ei/m, Equations 3 and 4. For translations the
energy is dependent on the velocity vi for the
different directions (x, y and z). For rotations this
is dependent on the angular velocity ωi for the
different directions (α, β and γ) and the arm r of
the rotating proof mass.
𝐸𝑖 1 2
= 𝑣 𝑖 = 𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑧 (3)
𝑚 2 𝑖
𝐸𝑖 1 2 2
= 𝑟 𝜔𝑖 𝑖 = 𝛼, 𝛽, 𝛾 (4)
𝑚 2
Subsequently, the relative energy per unit
mass was scaled to represent 24 hours with time
factor T and the activity percentage Pa to
represent the energy obtainable over 24 hours
per activity E24,i/m. This can be seen in Equation 5.
The energy over an entire day was obtained by
summing the energy of all activities, seen in
Equation 6.
24ℎ𝑟 ∗ 60𝑚𝑖𝑛 ∗ 60𝑠
𝑇= = 57,6 (5)
1500𝑠
𝐸24,𝑖 𝐸𝑖
= ∑ 𝑇𝑃𝑎 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑖 = 𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑧, 𝛼, 𝛽, 𝛾
𝑚 𝑚
𝑎
𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑎 = 𝑙𝑜𝑤, 𝑚𝑒𝑑, ℎ𝑖𝑔ℎ (6)
Using the relative energy per unit mass as
input, a principle component analysis was
performed with the Principle Component
Analysis (PCA) function in Matlab. This function
looks for a set of orthogonal axes within the
dataset, called principle components, where the
first principle component contains most variance.
The variance within a dataset gives information
about the differences within a signal. A
component of a signal that contains 100 % of the
variance contains all information that the original
signal contains. A choice to use only part of the
information with less variance will make analysis
or use of the data easier. However it will decrease
the accuracy of the results. For this study a
variance of 90 % was considered sufficient. By
plotting the principle components that contain a
total of 90 % variance against the measured axes,
the optimal orientation for harvesting was found.
The principle component analysis was performed
for the energy during a day, for the separate
activities and for different device sizes. For
different device sizes the arm length of the
rotation changes. A standard mechanical watch
will have approximately a 40 mm diameter and
therefore a rotation has a maximal arm of 20 mm.
For a larger device an arm of 200 mm and for a
smaller device a 2 mm arm was chosen. More
explanation about the kinetic energy and the
principle component analysis can be found in
Appendix III.
A power spectral density analysis gives
information about the frequency content of the
data. The power spectral density analysis was
performed using the Matlab pwelch-function,
with the kinetic energy of the first two principle
components as input. A window of 800 points, a
50 % overlap of the windows and the
measurement sampling frequency fs = 75 Hz were
used. The output of the function is the power P
per frequency f.
The relative occurrence of accelerations in wrist
motion was analyzed by creating a histogram of
the accelerations within the translations. The
acceleration range was separated into
500 intervals and the number of accelerations
within each interval used to create the histogram.
17
 Table III – The table shows the percentage of the total variance in the measured motion, that is explained by an increasing
number of principle components, for the different activities and the motion during an entire day. The first prinicple
component contains most variance and is therefore displayed first. Adding a second priniple component will increase the
amount of variance. This goes up to six prinicple components which explain the entire motion and therefore contain 100 %
of thevariance.
Number of Principle Components (PC): 1 2 3 4 5 6
All motion r = 200 mm 68.3 % 94.7 % 99.5 % 99.8 % 99.9 % 100 %
Covered
All motion r = 20 mm 79.1 % 98.3 % 99.3 % 99.7 % 99.9 % 100 %
variance:
All motion r = 2 mm 79.7 % 99.0 % 99.9 % 99.9 % 99.9 % 100 %
Low motion r = 20 mm 82.8 % 92.4 % 99.9 % 99.9 % 99.9 % 100 %
Med. motion r = 20 mm 63.2 % 93.7 % 99.9 % 99.9 % 99.9 % 100 %
High motion r = 20 mm 53.1 % 81.7 % 99.9 % 99.9 % 99.9 % 100 %

The histogram was normalized by dividing the
occurrence in each interval by the highest
occurrence.
RESULTS
Wrist motion during the day
The analysis of the Time Use activities results in
the activity percentage Pa of wrist motion during
the day. For the categories defined this is
Plow=14 %, Pmed=37 % and Phigh=0.62 %. This means
that high motion occurs for an average of
9 minutes per day. The other 50 % of the day
there is no motion of the wrist. The division of the
69 activities into the 4 categories can be seen in
Table III.
Principle components
1. 2-DOF motion harvester
The percentage of variance that is contained
in the principle components can be seen in
Table IV. It shows the increasing variance
explained by an increasing number of principle
components. For a proof mass with free motion
and an arm of 20 mm the first principle
component contains 79.6 % of the variance. The
first two principle components contain a total of
99 % of the variance. Equations 8 show the
orientation of the first principle component PC1
and the second principle component PC2. When
the coefficient is one the principle component is
oriented along the original measured axis (x, y, z,
α, β or γ). When the coefficient is zero it is
oriented 90 degrees away from this axis. For each
principle component only the three largest
coefficients are shown.
𝑃𝐶1 2 = (. 𝟗𝟗𝒙)𝟐 + (. 08𝑦)2 + (. 08𝑧)2 + ⋯
𝑃𝐶2 2 = (−.09𝑥)𝟐 + (.11𝑦)2 + (. 𝟗𝟖𝒛)𝟐 + ⋯ (8)
The first two principle components are mainly
composed of translation in x and z direction,
indicating that for a 2-DOF harvester the
translations are best to be harvested. Therefore,
the principle component analysis was performed
on the three translations to find the optimal plane
for harvesting. The results show that the optimal
plane is slightly rotated from the originally
measured x and z axis, which can be seen in
Figure 8. The optimal plane is visualised in
Figure 9. This plane is almost 90 degrees rotated
from the plane the current watch harvests from.
This plane can be described by the following three
points: O (0 0 0), A (0.9934 0.0834 0.0788) and
B (-0.0880 0.1126 0.9897).
2. The influence of the device size
Several new principle component analyses,
performed for different arm lengths of the
rotation, shows that for an arm of 200 mm the
rotations contain most energy, while for smaller
arms the translations contain most energy. For
the first three principle components orientation
is shown in Equations 9 for a 200 mm arm and
Equations 10 for a 2 mm arm. Only the original
Figure 9 – The orientation of the optimal plane for
harvesting the two translations. The square plane is the
optimal plane to harvest from (blue). The round plane is
the original plane that the current watch harvests from.

18
axis that is oriented closed to the principle
component is shown.
𝑃𝐶1,20 2 = ⋯ + (. 92𝛾)2
𝑃𝐶2,20 2 = ⋯ + (. 95𝛼)2 + ⋯
𝑃𝐶3,20 2 = ⋯ + (. 95𝛽)2 + ⋯
𝑃𝐶1,0.2 2 = ⋯ + (. 99𝑥)2 + ⋯
𝑃𝐶2,0.2 2 = ⋯ + (. 99𝑧)2 + ⋯
𝑃𝐶3,0.2 2 = ⋯ + (. 99𝑦)2 + ⋯
3. The influence of the different activities
There is a difference in the number of principle
components needed to describe the separate
activities, as seen in Table III. While medium wrist
motion requires one principle component, high
motion requires three to describe at least 90 % of
the variance.
Resonant frequencies
Figure 10 shows the power spectral density
analysis of the first two principle components.
The peaks in the power spectral density analysis
indicate the most common frequencies in the
measurements. It turns out that 92.4 % of the
power in PC1 and PC2 is available between 0 and
2 Hz. Hereafter the power drops rapidly, which is
confirmed in earlier studies [6, 7, 18].
Furthermore, the total power in PC1 contributes
for 98.5 % of the total power of both PC1 and PC2,
meaning that almost all of the power comes from
the first principle component. The circles in Figure
10 show the two most dominant frequencies for
PC1 and PC2. For PC1 the most dominant is at
1.64 Hz and the second at 0.88 Hz. For PC2 this is
respectively 0.88 and 1.76 Hz. These are the
-3
10
-4
10
-5
10
Power (dB)
-6
10
-7
10
-8
10
-9
10
0 2 4 6
Frequency (Hz)
Figure 10 – Power spectral density analysis of the velocities
in the optimal plane, for 1-10Hz. The circles indicate the two
highest peaks for the two prinicple components.
frequencies in which most of the accelerations
occur.
Present accelerations
Accelerations along the x- and y-axis were
found in the range -12 to 22 m/s2 and -25 to
(9) 23 m/s2. For the z-axis this range was more than
twice larger; -70 to 50 m/s2. However, most
accelerations occur between -15 and 15 m/s2, as
can be seen in Figure 11.
(10)
DISCUSSION
Successful measurements of the wrist
movements during several daily activities were
performed. Measuring only three activities allows
multiple measurements to be performed in a
small period of time. For this study, these
measurements were assumed to be sufficient.
However, proof that the use of only three
activities is sufficient for a good daily average was
not obtained. The percentages obtained from the
Time Use Data indicate that for almost 50 % of the
day no motion is experienced by the wrist. This
would occur during sleeping or reading. High
wrist motion occurs for an average of 9 minutes
per day, indicating an average of one hour of
sports per week. These numbers confirm the
expectations of the time use of an average
person.
The principle component analysis of the
measured motion shows that almost all energy is
contained in the translations. Due to the
harvester fitting within a circle with a 40 mm
diameter, the harvester has a small arm. This
results in low energy harvesting from motion in
translations. Therefore for such a small scale,
PC1
PC2
8 10
Figure 11 – Relative occurrence of translational accelerations,
between -20 and 15 m/s2.
19
harvesting from translations will allow an
increase in energy harvesting.
The results show that the new plane is
90 degrees rotated from the current plane. This
can have a large influence on the design and the
design requirements. Furthermore it can be seen
that the first principle component contains 80 %
of the variance, while PC2 adds 10 %. To simplify
the design while only losing a small amount of
energy that can be harvested it can therefore be
chosen to harvest from only one translation. The
orientation of this must be in the x direction. A
watch does exist that harvests from one
translation, the Corum Golden Bridge Automatic,
shown in Figure 12 [19]. However, here the
harvester is oriented in the y direction, which has
been shown not to be the optimal orientation.
It was seen in Table IV that when harvesting
for specific motion there is a difference between
the amount of principle components that must be
harvested to achieve the 90 % variance. This is
due to the difference in motion during these
different activities. During running the wrist
receives a shock when the foot strikes the
ground. This shock has a different direction from
the arm motion. The orientation of the principle
components is also different between the
activities. During walking the first two principle
components contain mainly accelerations in the x
and z direction. During running the first two
components are oriented towards the y and
z direction. This can be explained by the stance of
the arm; during walking the arm is extended,
while during running the arm is flexed at the
elbow. This results in a different axis on which the
shocks from the heel strike and the gravity work.
From the results of the PCA it can be concluded
that for each application, location and size of a
harvester the orientation and number of
Figure 12 – The Corum Golden Bridge Automatic. The proof mass of the translational automatic harvesting device can be
seen behind the gears. Source: [19].
20
harvested degrees of freedom must be
re-evaluated.
During the study, gravity was not removed
from the measured signal. Therefore this data
incorporates not only motion of the wrist but also
the influence of gravity on the harvester. Since
gravity is always present when the motion
harvester is used, including gravity gives a
realistic view of the accelerations on the device.
Accordingly, using this dataset for optimizing the
design of an energy harvester will allow the
influence of gravity on the device to be taken into
account directly.
From the accelerations that occur most often,
Figure 11, the range of acceleration for which the
energy harvester must be optimized can be
found. Allowing the harvester to withstand
accelerations from the entire range will increase
the durability of the harvester. These
optimization criteria also hold for the rest of the
wrist watch. The results of the Power Spectral
Density analysis can be used to optimize resonant
energy harvesters. Optimizing then for the
dominant frequency range from 0 - 2 Hz will allow
more efficient harvesting.
CONCLUSION
Measurements of wrist motion were
performed to find the directions in which the
wrist moves the most. It was shown that
harvesting from two translations allows
harvesting of most of the wrist motion. These two
translations contain 98 % of the total variance of
the motion. The results showed that the optimal
harvesting can be performed in a plane slightly
rotated from the original x- and z-axes. The
optimal plane is almost 90 degrees rotated from
the original plane where the watch is worn. While
the dominant frequency range of wrist motion is
between 0 and 2 Hz, the two most dominant
frequencies can be found at 0.88 and 1.64 Hz for
Several requirements result from the
integration of the motion harvester into a wrist
watch. These requirements are summed in
Table IV. Since the motion harvester is to be
integrated into a mechanical watch, it must be a
mechanical mechanism. Furthermore, to keep
the mechanism as thin as possible and due to the
2-DOF harvesting the motion of the parts must be
within the plane. The watch changes orientation
during motion, therefore gravity must not
prevent the motion harvester of harvesting
energy. The motion harvester must fit within the
area of a watch and can maximally add half the
height. Also the mechanism may double the
weight of the movement. A small search was
performed into the sizes of wrist watches. The
results can be seen in Appendix IV. From these
results it was chosen to limit the size of the
motion harvester to 40 mm in diameter, 5 mm in
height and limit the weight 50 grams. The
rotational axis of the harvester must have a
stationary position and be perpendicular to the
structure plane. Due to the small size and
therefore difficult assembly we want to have as
few parts as possible. Considering the compact
design of a wrist watch, bending of a part of the
the first principle component and 0.88 and
1.76 Hz for the second principle component.
4. 2-DOF INERTIAL HARVESTER DESIGN
DESIGN DIRECTION
From Chapter 3 we find that we must design
a harvester for a wrist watch that can harvest
from two translations. This is visualized in
Figure 13. It is important to note that the plane in
which harvesting is optimal is different from the
plane the watch is currently worn in. However,
changing the plane would complicate the design
process of the motion harvester, requiring
redesign of the connection between the watch
and the harvester. Therefore for the initial design
it is assumed that the watch will also be
redesigned and be worn in the optimal plane. The
motion harvester is to be integrated in a
mechanical watch and therefore must be
completely mechanical. Therefore the challenge
for this design process is to find a mechanism that
can connect the proof mass to the point of
rotation and transform the two translations into
a rotation.
METHOD
Unlike a measurement protocol, a design
process is hard de define beforehand. It is an
iterative process, where the method of a design
step is based on the results of the previous step.
Therefore a brief indication of the method is
given in this paragraph and an extensive
explanation will be given with the results.
Based on the design direction and goal of the
study, design requirements were formed for the
2-DOF motion harvester. The requirements were
separated into two parts: requirements based on
the integration with the wrist watch and
requirements based on the results of the wrist
motion analysis. Using these requirements and
the design direction a conceptual design was
made. Based on the conceptual design and using
kinematical equations the optimal configuration
of the final design is calculated. All sizes of the
motion harvester are then defined to achieve a
final dimensional design.
REQUIREMENTS
Requirements based on integration with an
automatic wrist watch
mechanism can result in friction between this and
other parts. Therefore a limit is set on how far a
part of the mechanism may bend; 0.1 mm
vertically. The device must withstand
accelerations over the range of -70 to 50 m/s2.
The mainspring that must be found is selected
as a standard ETA 2824 mainspring
(E = 2.3x105 MPa, 400 mm length and 1.23 mm
thickness) [10]. More information about the
Figure 13 – A schematic of the new motion harvester. A
mass must be connected to the rotation point and be
able to harvest from motion in two directions.
21
 Table IV – A summary of the design requirements for the
2-DOF motion harvester.
Requirements based on integration with an automatic
wrist watch
Mechanical
Built in a plane
Harvest in different orientations
Diameter: 40 mm
Height: 5 mm
Weight: 50 gram
Rotational axis: stationary and perpendicular to plane
Parts: Bending < 0.1 mm
Withstand -70 to 50 m/s2
Overcome winding force of 0.087x10-3 N/deg.
Requirements based on the working principle of the
motion harvester
Transform 2 translations into a rotation
Maximize proof mass
Optimal use of workspace
Avoid singularities
Least collisions
choice for an ETA mainspring can be found in
Appendix IV. The gear train, between the motion
harvester and mainspring, has a reduction ratio.
This reduction ratio increases the torque of the
rotation to allow it to wind up the mainspring.
This reduction ration is different for each brand,
but lies between 1:110 and 1:180 [7]. To keep the
results applicable for most watches, for this study
the smallest reduction ratio, 1:110, is selected. A
constant force is assumed for the mainspring and
is chosen from the graph on the winding force of
the mainspring as 37x10-3 N, Appendix I [7]. With
the reduction ratio and an assumed arm of the
main spring of 8 mm, the torque exerted on the
harvester calculates to a constant 27x10-6 Nm.
The spring constant of the mainspring can be
derived from the same graph as the winding force
and is 0.087x10-3 N/deg.
b)
a)
Figure 14 – Two of the design steps. The dotted line
indicates the path of the proof mass where the translations
are not converted into a rotation.
22
Requirements based on the working
principle of the motion harvester
To harvest motion there must be a proof mass.
As seen in Equations 1 and 2, the mass must be as
large as possible. For maximal harvesting the
motion harvester must have maximal
displacement of the proof mass. This is achieved
by allowing the mechanism to cover as much of
the workspace as possible. For optimal motion,
singularities in the system must be avoided. A
collision of the proof mass with the boundary will
result in energy loss, therefore the possibility of
collisions must be minimized and preferably
avoided. Since the goal is to harvest two
translations, every translation of the motion
harvester must result in a rotation.
CONCEPTUAL DESIGN
The simplest mechanism that allows a
translation to be transformed into a rotation is
the single link, which is currently used in the
rotor. An extra degree of freedom can be added
to this system, by adding a joint, seen in
Figure 14a. This allows the two translations to be
converted to a rotation. However when the lower
link is still and the proof mass moves around the
rotation point of the two links no energy will be
harvested. The path of the proof mass is indicated
in Figure 14a with the dotted line. Therefore the
linkage is mirrored, allowing each motion to be
converted in a rotation of the links around the
centre point. The result is a 4-bar mechanism with
an added proof mass, Figure 14b. To check
whether any other linkage mechanisms allow the
same transformation of translation to rotation, a
great many other possible bar mechanisms were
analysed. This can be found in Appendix VI. The
4-bar mechanism was confirmed as best solution,
being the mechanism with least links and no
Figure 15 – Conceptual design
sliding mechanism that was being able to convert
the translations into rotations. Since the rotation
point is not fixed to the centre, it can be moved
out of the centre and a double rotation point can
be created. This new configuration can be seen in
Figure 15. In the conceptual design the proof
mass obtains relative motion when the frame is
actuated by the motions of the wrist. This relative
motion of the proof mass is then transformed
into a rotation.
DIMENSIONAL DESIGN
Link lengths and location of rotation points
In order to finalize the design, a kinematic
analysis was performed, firstly to find the optimal
position of the rotation points named A (-c, -cc)
and B (c, -cc) and secondly to find the optimal
linkage sizes (L1 and L2) for these rotation points.
c defines the distance of the rotation point to the
y-axis and cc the distance to the x-axis. The link
sizes are indicated with L1 for the lower link and
L2 for the upper link. These variables can be seen
in Figure 16. For the kinematic analysis two
assumptions are made. Firstly it was assumed
𝑃𝑥 = 𝐴𝑥1 + 𝐿1 𝑐𝑜𝑠(𝜃𝐴1 ) + 𝐿2 𝑐𝑜𝑠(𝜃𝐴1 + 𝜃𝐴2 ) = 𝐵𝑥 + 𝐿1 𝑐𝑜𝑠(𝜃𝐵1 ) + 𝐿2 𝑐𝑜𝑠(𝜃𝐵1 + 𝜃𝐵2 )
𝑃𝑦 = 𝐴𝑥 + 𝐿1 sin(𝜃𝐴1 ) + 𝐿2 sin(𝜃𝐴1 + 𝜃𝐴2 ) = 𝐵𝑦 + 𝐿1 𝑠𝑖𝑛(𝜃𝐵1 ) + 𝐿2 𝑠𝑖𝑛(𝜃𝐵1 + 𝜃𝐵2 ) (11)
that the linkage is symmetrical for both upper and
lower links and the position of the rotation points
over the x-axis. Secondly it was assumed that the
links can move over each other and over the
rotation points. All possible combinations of the
four variables were made. Variables L1 and L2
were varied from 6 to 22 mm with 4 mm steps
and for c and cc six key positions were selected.
Each of these combinations represented a unique
mechanism. For each combination it was checked
whether the links were large enough to span the
area between the rotation points (L1+L2 > c) and
whether L1 fits inside the boundary of the watch,
as otherwise the configuration cannot function.
In order to calculate the reach of the mechanism
a grid was made within the 20 mm circular
boundary with points 1 mm apart, as shown in
Figure 17. For each combination of variables the
percentage of reachable grid points was
calculated by solving Equations 11 for each grid
point and for any angle (θ) between 0 and 2π.
Since the workspace of the entire mechanism is a
circle, a point was only considered reachable if
the links would not cross the boundary and
therefore could satisfy Equations 12.

2
√(𝐴𝑥 + 𝐿1 cos(𝜃𝐴1 ))2 + (𝐴𝑦 + 𝐿1 sin(𝜃𝐴1 )) < 2𝑐𝑚

√(𝐵𝑥 + 𝐿1 cos(𝜃𝐵1 ))2 + (𝐵𝑦 + 𝐿1 sin(𝜃𝐵1 ))2 < 2𝑐𝑚 (12)

Figure 16 – The variables of the mechanism used for the Figure 17 – The grid used for the workspace analysis.
kinetic analysis.

23
 Reach
100
0

cc - distance to x-axis (mm)

80
-5

Workspace (%)
60
-10
40

-15
20

-20
0
-20 -15 -10 -5 0
c - distance to y-axis (mm)
Figure 18 – The highest percentage of workspace that can be reached for different rotation points within a boundary with
a 40 mm diameter. The left rotation points are shown as the results of the two are the same. The best rotation points lead
to most workspace coverage.
Reach (0,0) Reach (0,0)
25 100 25 100

20 80 20 80

Length link 2 (mm)

Length link 2 (mm)

Workspace (%)

Collisions (%)
15 60 15 60

10 40 10 40

5 20 5 20

0 0 0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
Length link 1 (mm) Length link 1 (mm)
Figure 19 – The percentage of workspace that is reachable and the percentage of collisions for mechanisms with the rotation
points A (0,0) and B (0,0) within a boundary with a 40 mm diameter. Shown is a linkage that could be possible for these
rotation points. The best mechanism has most workspace coverage and least collisions.
Reach (1,0) Reach (1,0)
25 100 25 100

20 80 20 80
Length link 2 (mm)
Length link 2 (mm)

Workspace (%)

Collisions (%)
15 60 15 60

10 40 10 40

5 20 5 20

0 0 0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
Length link 1 (mm) Length link 1 (mm)
Figure 20- The percentage of workspace that is reachable and the percentage of collisions for mechanisms with the rotation
points A (-10,0) and B (10,0) within a boundary with a 40 mm diameter. Shown is a linkage that could be possible for these
rotation points. The best mechanism has most workspace coverage and least collisions.
Reach (2,0) Reach (2,0)
25 100 25 100

20 80 20 80
Length link 2 (mm)
Length link 2 (mm)

Workspace (%)

Collisions (%)

15 60 15 60

10 40 10 40

5 20 5 20

0 0 0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25 0 5 10 15 20 25
Length link 1 (mm) Length link 1 (mm)
Figure 21 – The percentage of workspace that is reachable and the percentage of collisions for mechanisms with the rotation
points A (-20,0) and B (20,0) within a boundary with a 40 mm diameter. Shown is a linkage that could be possible for these
rotation points. The best mechanism has most workspace coverage and least collisions.

24
Six different locations of the rotation points were
tested and the largest amount of workspace
reachable for the different rotation points can be
seen in Figure 18. Only the position of the left
rotation point can be seen, since the location of
the rotation points is symmetrical. The graph
shows 95 - 100 % of the workspace was reached
for the three rotation points that lie on the x-axis.
For these three rotation points, A (0,0), A (-10,0)
and A (-20,0) the workspace and relative amount
of collisions achieved for different linkage sizes
are shown in Figures 19 - 21.
For the mechanism with a central rotation
point, Figure 19, it can be seen that there are no
collisions with the boundary for any link size.
However, this was calculated based on the
workspace within the boundary. Links with a size
larger than 10 mm will have collisions with the
boundary. The mechanism with two rotation
points at 10 mm from the centre, Figure 20, has
one linkage with a workspace reach of 91 %. All
link combinations have a smaller workspace
reach. The mechanism in Figure 21 has three link
combinations that results in > 98 % workspace
reach. However, these link combinations also
have collisions as can be seen in Figure 21.
From these results we can conclude that the
mechanism with one central rotation point,
shown in Figure 19, is chosen as best mechanism
with largest workspace and least collision. For this
mechanism the workspace is 100 % for all equal
link lengths larger than 10 mm. Since the
possibility of collisions is larger for larger links, the
smallest combination with 100 % reach was
selected: L1 = 10 mm and L2 = 10 mm.
Figure 22 – The final design of the 2-DOF inertial motion harvester. An assembly and an exploded view with a 40 mm base.
Link thickness
The minimal thickness of the links is
dependent on the allowed bending of the links
vertically. Based on the maximal bending of the
links ν defined in the requirements as 0.1 mm and
the link lengths calculated previously, using
Equation 13 the necessary height t and width w
of the links can be calculated. As stainless steel is
a commonly used metal in the watch industry, it
is assumed that the links will be manufactured
from stainless steel (ρ = 8000 kg/m3,
E = 193 GPa). The force exerted on the links can
be calculated using the maximal weight of the
proof mass (F = ma). To find the weight of the
links the density ρ of the material must be
multiplied with the volume V, Equation 14.
𝐹𝐿3
𝜈= (13)
3𝐸𝐼
𝑚 = 𝑉ρ (14)
The weight of the links was assumed to be
negligible in comparison with the maximal proof
mass of 50 gr. The accelerations working on the
mass are maximally -70 m/s2, therefore the
vertical force (F = m g) working on the weight is
maximally 3.5 N. The total length of the two
beams is 20 mm and maximal bending νmax is
0.1 mm. Using the standard equation for bending
of a beam, Equation 13, and the area moment of
inertia of a beam (I = b * h3 / 12) the sizes are
selected to be 1.5 mm in width w and 1.6 mm in
height h. Calculating the weight of this 10 mm link
with Equation 14 results in a mass of 0.4 gr. If the
proof mass weighs 50 grams, this is more than
25
100 times the weight of the link and the link
weight was indeed negligible.
Size of the proof mass
To maximize harvesting the weight of the
proof mass must be as large as possible as was
shown in Equation 2. To maximize the motion of
the proof mass, the centre of mass must be as
close to the boundary as possible. The size and
weight of the mass are limited by the boundary.
To get an idea of the weight that would fit inside
a circular boundary, the height of two cylinders is
calculated with Equation 14. A stainless steel
cylinder (ρ = 8000 kg/m3) with a 20 mm radius and
weighing the maximally allowed 50 gram would
have a 5 mm height (the maximally allowed
height of the total motion harvester). Even a
platinum cylinder (ρ = 21400 kg/m3, also a
material used in watches) has a 3.7 mm height. To
obtain an eccentric weight, which is needed for
maximal motion of the centre of mass, that fits
inside a circular boundary it is necessary to have
a partial ring. This partial ring can be seen in
Figure 22. Here a trade-off exists: a larger ring will
have a larger weight, but the centre of mass will
also lie closer to the rotation point. To this end a
weight was selected with an outer radius of
20 mm, an inner radius of 15 mm and covering
1/3 of a circle. A larger thickness at the outer edge
of the weight allows the centre of mass to be
positioned further from the centre. An average
thickness of 4 mm results in a proof mass
weighing 14 gram.
Rotation transfer
Finally, the rotations that the links make
around the chosen rotation point must be
transferred to the main spring. The rotations of
the two links at the central rotation point need to
be passed on to the reverser separately.
Therefore the two lower links are connected to a
double axis. This double axis can be in the
Figure 23 – The two singularities that the 2-DOF harvester
has. For each singularity a direction of force to which the
mechanism is unresponsive is indicated.
26
exploded view in Figure 21. At the bottom, both
the inner and outer axis are connected to a gear.
From these gears each of the two rotations can
be passed on to the rest of the watch movement.
For now it is assumed that the two rotations are
separately passed on to two reversers and each
rotation is used to wind one of two mainsprings.
This issue is further evaluated in Chapter 6.A.
DISCUSSION
The chosen design has two positions where
singularities might occur. This is the position
when the legs are fully extended and the position
where the weight is above the rotation point.
These two positions are visualized in Figure 23. At
the extended position, the mechanism will not
move inwards in response to an acceleration. At
the second position not all accelerations will
result in a response of the mechanism. In the final
design, Figure 22, these positions cannot be
reached due to the assembly of the links. The
mass cannot move over the rotation point
because the height of the links prevent this. Also
the two joints between the links prevent the links
from stretching fully.
The total weight of the mechanism
(4 x 0.4 gram for the links + 14 gram for the weight
+ the double axis + the bridge) is expected to be
less than the maximal allowed 50 gram set in the
requirements, though an estimation for the
bridge is hard to give. No information could be
found about the actual weight of a proof mass so
it could not be compared to an actual rotor of an
automatic winding device. The manufacturing of
a good prototype will also allow testing different
sizes of the mass.
The selected sizes for the parts of the
harvester are based on calculations. When these
separate parts are combined into the total design
of the harvester some practical considerations
come in play such as the connections between
the parts. One important connection is the
connection between the weight and the links. The
weight is designed so the wider edge faces the
boundary of the watch. The weight cannot pass
over the centre point and is therefore unlikely to
turn a complete 180 degrees. If the weight turns,
it is assumed the weight will be pushed back into
the original position when the mechanism moves
towards the boundary. A good prototype will
prove whether this is the case or if a different
design of the weight or different connection to
the links are necessary. Since the harvester is 5. EVALUATION
usually visible in an automatic watch, aesthetics
play a role in the design. It is expected that the INTRODUCTION
design will further change when prototypes are To indicate whether the goal of the study was
made and choices have to be made to improve achieved and to indicate whether the new design
assembly. It is advised to work on a more detailed has the potential to harvest more energy
design with a watch maker to be able to get the compared to the original 1-DOF harvester an
parts as small as possible while still being able to evaluation was performed. The evaluation was
manufacture the parts with standard separated into two parts. Firstly it was checked
manufacturing methods. whether the design fulfills the requirements that
During this study it was assumed that the were stated at the beginning of the design
watch was worn in the same plane as the optimal process. Secondly, for proof of concept, a
harvesting plane. Another interesting option, comparison between the behavior of the 1-DOF
which was not explored during this study, is to motion harvester and the 2-DOF motion
build the watch face and harvester in two harvester is performed. To this end a computer
different planes. Two separate planes would model was made and motion was simulated. A
require a mechanical connection to pass over an prototype was made at true scale to see whether
angle. However, this might result in a more the design can also be fabricated.
ergonomic watch than having to wear the entire FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
watch on the side of the wrist. A similar concept
The designed motion harvester is completely
was used in the Ventura Sparc, Figure 24, where
mechanical and designed to be integrated into a
a harvester is used to power a quartz watch [20].
mechanical watch. The size and weight of the
In this design the plane of the harvester is not the
4-bar mechanism and proof mass fulfill the size
plane we measured as optimal, but is closer to the
requirements. The axis, reverser and two
optimal plane than in a regular watch. Though the
mainsprings are not taken into account for this
harvester should be able to harvest more motion
size requirement, since these are also present in
in this plane, based on the information given by
the current watch. The links do not bend more
Ventura on the website it is assumed that this
than 0.1 mm, which is within the requirements.
choice was made for design reasons and not to
As will be seen in the simulation results in the
increase harvesting.
next part of the chapter, the 2-DOF harvester is
CONCLUSION able to overcome the winding force of the
The final design can be seen in Figure 22. A mainspring. Due to time restrictions, it was not
weight of 14 gram is positioned at the end of the tested if the harvester is able to withstand the
4-bar mechanism. The links have a length of accelerations that are present in wrist motion.
10 mm. These links are in turn connected to the
double axis that is positioned at the central point
of the 40 mm diameter circular boundary. At the
bottom of both the inner and outer axis a gear is
fixed. These are in turn connected to two
separate gears. This allows the two links to
separately actuate one of the gears. From these
gears the rotation can be passed on to one of two
reversers that will in turn be connected to one of
two mainsprings. In Appendix VI technical
drawings of the mechanism and the separate
parts can be found.

Figure 24 - The Ventura uses an automatic winding device

to power a quartz watch. The winding device is not in the
same plane as the face of the watch. Source: [20]

27
 The weight and location of the centre of mass
of the proof mass are as large as possible and as
close to the boundary as possible as was required.
The 10 mm links together with the central
rotation points can cover the entire workspace
and will not collide with the boundary. The two
possible singularities are avoided due to the
assembly of the links as can be seen in Figure 23.
This prevents the end point of the 4-bar
mechanism from moving over the rotation point
and the links from crossing each other. Due to the
two links where rotations are harvested, every
translation of the mass results in a rotation of the
links at the central rotation point.
PROOF OF PRINCIPLE
Method
A computer model of the 1-DOF harvester and
the new 2-DOF harvester was created with the
multibody dynamics software Adams (MSC
Software, version 2013) [21]. Adams solves
nonlinear numerical equations. Adams was used
because in this program it is easier to deal with
mechanisms that have singularities. The 2-DOF
harvester has two such singularities, as discussed
in Chapter 4.F, when sizes of linkages and rotation
points are not taken into account. When
actuating the 2-DOF harvester it will converge to
one of these singularities. Appendix VI shows
other simulation methods that were applied and
the encountered problems. To simplify the
model, several assumptions were made: there
was no influence of gravity, there was no friction
in the joints, the collisions are non-elastic, the
mainspring exerted a constant torque and the
masses were allowed free rotation around the
axis. The front view of the Adams model of the
1-DOF and 2-DOF harvester can be seen in
Figure 25. The side view of the model can be seen
in Figure 26.
The 1-DOF harvester consisted of a 20 mm link
with a 10 gram circular proof mass at the end. The
link rotated around a central rotation point.
The 2-DOF harvester consisted of four arms
and a 14 gram circular proof mass. The size of the
proof mass and rotation point, which have a
diameter of 3 mm, together with the mechanical
stops implemented in the 2-DOF harvester links,
prevented the mechanism from reaching the two
singular positions. Therefore the angle between
the links at the rotation point is between 20 and
169 degrees. With extended arms the weight was

Figure 25 – The top view of the computer model used for the simulation of the 1-DOF and 2-DOF harvester as modeled in
Adams. m indicates the mass and R the rotation point. The arrows indicate the direction of the three accelerations (a1, a2 and
a3) that work om the centre of gravity of the base. The mechanical stop, used to prevent the mechanism from reaching a
singular position, is shown in the close-up view.

Figure 26 – The side view of the harvesters modeled in Adams. It can be seen that the masses and links do not come in
contact with the ground.

28
at a distance of 20 mm from the rotation point, spring constant k, the energy stored in the main
therefore the links have a length of 10.15 mm. spring Um was calculated using Equation 15.
Both the 1-DOF and 2-DOF harvester were
1
placed on the same base, to allow actuation of 𝑈𝑚 = 𝑘𝜃𝑚 2 (15)
the base. At each of the connections between the 2
links and the central rotation point a torque was Since the 2-DOF harvester is attached to two
placed. This torque was opposite to the motion of mainsprings. half the spring constant was used
the links. The mainspring can only wind up one and the energy of the two links was added.
way and rotation in the other direction is Results
prevented and only exerts force on the gear train
Figure 27 shows the response of the 1- and
when it is winding the mainspring. Therefore the
2-DOF harvesters when the base is excited. For a
torque was only exerted on the links when the
force in the x direction the base moves to the
links were in motion. As calculated in Chapter
right and the response of the linkages can be seen
4.C.i the torque placed on the link by the
in Figure 27a. It can be seen that the 1-DOF
mainspring was 27x10-6 Nm. For the 2-DOF
harvester does not respond to the acceleration.
system half the torque was placed on each of the
This is due to the fact that the force is in the same
two links. It was assumed that the mainspring has
direction as the link. The mass of the 2-DOF
unlimited winding and therefore unlimited
harvester will move in the direction opposite to
energy storage.
the base until the mass encounters the rotation
A constant horizontal acceleration of 10 m/s2
point at 0.27 seconds. Then the mass stops
was placed on the base, which is an acceleration
moving until at 0.55 seconds the mass then
that can be found with high occurrence in wrist
moves around the rotation point and moves until
motion. The acceleration was modelled as step
the links are fully stretched. Due to the inertia it
response, where from standstill the model
gains from this motion, an oscillating motion can
experiences an acceleration at time t = 0 s. This
be seen from this point on. The period of this
step response allows the effect of an impulse of
oscillation decreases with time. The small
the system to be seen and to see at which velocity
disturbances between T2 and T3, indicated in
the system starts to responds. For each
Figure 27a, come from bouncing between the
simulation a different direction of the
mass and the rotation point resulting from the
acceleration was used: a1, a2 and a3 seen in
increasing acceleration on the base. Figure 28
Figure 25. Acceleration a1 is directed so it pushed
shows the energy harvested from the movement
the base sideways, a2 is directed so it pushed the
of the two harvesters. It can be seen in Figure 28a
base upwards and a3 is aimed at an angle of
that for a1 the 1-DOF harvester does not harvest
45 degrees of a1 and a2. The same initial position
any energy, since the 1-DOF harvester does not
was used for each simulation. The simulation was
move. It can be seen that between 0.27 and
run for 1 second to give the two harvesters time
0.55 seconds the 2-DOF harvester does not
to respond and to be able to see the full response
harvest energy.
of the harvesters.
When the base encounters a motion in the
For the 1-DOF harvester the angular velocity
y direction, a motion moving the base upwards,
of the link was recorded. For the 2-DOF harvester
the 1-DOF harvester will move to the bottom
the angular velocity of the two links connected to
position and will slowly oscillate around this
the rotation point was measured. This velocity
point. This can be seen in Figure 27b. This
was used to compare the motion of the two
oscillation decreases over time. The 2-DOF
harvesters. Furthermore, integration of the
harvester shows the exact same behaviour, it will
velocity gives the displacement of the links. The
move downwards with the links fully stretched.
spring constant of the mainspring km, derived
Due to this similar motion, the energy harvested
from the same graph as the torque, is
from acceleration a2 is the same for the 1- and 2-
0.087x10-3 N/deg. Due to the reduction ratio, the
DOF harvester as seen in Figures 28a and 28b.
mainspring encounters a displacement 1/110 of
For a motion in both x and y direction, once
the link displacement. The amount of energy
again this oscillating behaviour can be seen for
harvested with the 2 harvesters can be calculated
both the 1- and 2-DOF harvester in Figure 27c. It
and compared. With the displacement θm and the

29
 4000 10
T1 T2 T3 T4 T1
Angular velocity (deg/sec)

Base velocity (m/sec)

2000
T2

0 0
T3

-2000

T4
-4000 -10
0 0.2 0.60.4 0.8 1
Time (sec)
a) Response for a1, the acceleration on the base in the x direction; the base moves sideways. The 1-DOF harvester shows
no response.

4000 10
T1 T2
Angular velocity (deg/sec)

Base velocity (m/sec)

2000

0 0
T1

-2000

T2
-4000 -10
0 0.2
0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Time (sec)
b) Response for a2, the acceleration on the base in the y direction; the base moves upwards. The 1- and 2-DOF harvester
show the same response

4000 10
T1 T2 T3
Angular velocity (deg/sec)

Base velocity (m/sec)

2000
T1

0 0
T2

-2000 2-DOF 1
2-DOF 2
1-DOF T3
-4000 -10
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Time (sec)
c) Response for a3, the acceleration on the base in both the x and y direction; the base moves both up and sideways.

Figure 27 – The response of the 1- and 2-DOF harvester on differently directed forces. The positions of the two harvesters
at different times is shown to illustrate the motion of the harvesters. In this illustrations, the 1-DOF harvester can be seen
on the left and the 2-DOF harvester can be seen on the right.

30
can be seen that up to 0.27 seconds the proof
mass of the 2-DOF harvester first moves towards
the rotation point before the links stretch again
and start to follow the same behaviour as the
1-DOF harvester. The 1-DOF harvester
experiences an oscillation with a higher speed
compared to the 2-DOF harvester. This results in
more energy harvested by the 1-DOF harvester
after 1 second than the 2-DOF, even though the
2-DOF harvester harvests more energy in the
beginning of the motion. It can be seen in
Figure 27c that the 2-DOF harvester responds
slightly faster to the accelerations on the base
than the 1-DOF harvester.
From the energy harvested for the three
different motions the total harvested energy for
the three accelerations can be obtained. The
motion of the harvester contains collisions for
two of the three simulated motions. The response
of the model after these collisions is probably
different than it would be in reality. Therefore the
energy harvested before 0.27 seconds is given.
For the three simulated motions over a time of
0.27 seconds and a frictionless model the 2-DOF
harvester harvests 65 % more energy than the
original 1-DOF harvester.
PROTOTYPE
For production of the 2-DOF harvester
prototype it was chosen to make it from acrylic
sheets using a laser cutter. More advanced
-6
x 10
8 8
1-DOF a1
1-DOF a2
6 1-DOF a3
Energy (J)
methods were not available for this study due to
time and funding limitations. The design given in
Chapter 4 and Appendix VII was adapted to be
produced with a laser cutter. The scale of the
design was kept the same and fits within the
40 mm diameter. The parts were made from
acrylic sheets of different thicknesses. Two extra
gears were connected to the inner and outer axis
to be able to see the rotations harvested by the
two links. For the gears standard gears from a
modelling shop were used. The proof mass was
also cut from the acrylic sheets and does
therefore not have the 14 gram mass.
The prototype can be seen in Figure 29. When
the proof mass of the prototype is moved it can
be seen that the two gears are indeed separately
driven. Friction has a lot of influence on the
motion of the mechanism. Therefore, for this
prototype the motion will not be optimally used
to harvest energy. The height of the 4-bar
mechanism is 6 mm. Including the gears this is a
total height of 20 mm. This is because of the
standard gears used. In watches the gears used
are a lot smaller. Though the size of the prototype
is larger than the requirement of 5 mm, with
more advanced manufacturing methods it is
expected to be possible to manufacture this
device within the given height requirements.
-6
x 10
2-DOF a1
2-DOF a2
6 2-DOF a3

Energy (J)

4 4

2 2

0 0

0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1

Time (sec) Time (sec)
a) The 1-DOF harvester b) The 2-DOF harvester
Figure 28 – The theoretical maximum energy that can be harvested by the 1- and 2-DOF harvester from the three simulated
accelerations.

31
 DISCUSSION
The improvement of the harvester can be seen
most clearly when the harvester initially changes
position. Since the wrist motion is a quick
changing and erratic motion it is expected that for
daily use this increase in harvesting will be seen
even more clearly. Though only three possible
movements were analysed, the results give a
strong indication that the 2-DOF harvester will be
able to harvest more energy from true wrist
motion.
One assumption made for the model was the
non-elastic collision. However, in reality it is
expected that the response will not be
completely non-elastic. The effect of this is on the
harvester is unknown. From Figure 27 it can be
seen that a collision does not occur until
0.27 seconds. The motion between 0 and
0.27 seconds shows a 98 % increase in energy
harvested for the 2-DOF harvester. It can
therefore be assumed that the improvement of
the harvester will still be seen for a different
collision response. When the total energy that
can be harvested from the simulated signal is
calculated this results in an increase of 36 % for
the 2-DOF harvester. This is less than the energy
harvested during the first 0.27 seconds. This is the
result of the faster oscillation of the 1-DOF
harvester for the third acceleration. It is not
expected that this number is representative for a
true harvester since it is expected this oscillation
motion will decrease a lot faster because of
friction.
Figure 29 – A prototype of the design. The prototype was made as closely to the designed specifications as possible with a
40 mm diameter base.
32
In this simulation an oscillating motion of both
the 1- and 2-DOF harvester can be seen. This
leads to more motion than was expected. This is
probably due to the lack of friction at rotation
points within the model. It has been mentioned
in earlier studies that the efficiency of the
automatic winding device is less than 50 %,
largely due to friction in the system [10]. The
results could be improved by adding friction to
the rotation points. The size of this friction is
unknown and must be found experimentally. The
oscillating motion will decrease faster with this
added friction.
The results are influenced by the assumption
of free rotation of the cylindrical mass around the
rotation point. In Figure 27a, during the
horizontal acceleration a1, the mass rolls around
the rotation point. However, it is not known how
the weight will be attached to the links and this
free rotation is therefore not guaranteed. This
might reduce the motion of the 2-DOF harvester
compared to the simulated results. Nevertheless,
without this rolling motion, the motion of the
2-DOF harvester will still be more than the motion
of the 1-DOF harvester.
The simulation shows that there are two
collisions that occur within the mechanism; 1)
when the mechanism reaches full extension and
the links collide and 2) when the mass moves
towards the central rotation point and collides.
During these collisions the mechanism loses
energy. Avoiding this collision could improve the
energy harvesting capacities of the mechanism. It
would be interesting to look into this problem and
see whether this can be solved by adding a
compliant part to the mechanism. This can be a
spring introduced between the rotation points of
the two links or as a compliant joint which
integrates this compliant behaviour into the
mechanism. These options are visualised in
Figure 30. These elastic elements can avoid the
collisions, but might also result in an oscillating
motion that can increase the motion of the
mechanism if the eigenfrequency of the
mechanism is correctly chosen.
Moving the prototype by hand results in the
expected motion. The prototype can convert
motion from two translations into rotations.
However, the high friction within the joints of the
prototype results in high forces necessary to
move the proof mass. For measurements of the
reaction of the prototype to wrist motion a better
prototype with less friction is recommended.
However, even with the friction and the light
proof mass, the prototype does respond to
motion and shows a motion similar to the
expected response.
CONCLUSION
The harvester fulfills both the requirements
based on implementation into a wrist watch and
the requirements that were derived from the
measured wrist motion. Furthermore,
simulations of both the 1-DOF and 2-DOF
harvester, show that the new 2-DOF harvester
does lead to more rotations around the central
rotation point and therefore more energy that is
harvested. An evaluation of the energy harvested
shows that a 36 - 98 % increase of energy
harvested can be gained with the new 2-DOF
harvester. Though this is only true for the case
with the assumptions and settings of the
simulation, it is a strong indication that the 2-DOF
harvester will indeed be able to harvest more
energy from wrist motion than the original 1-DOF
harvester. A prototype was made of the design at
true scale. This prototype shows that the design
can be produced within the required size scale
and shows that the expected reaction to
translations can be obtained.
6. GENERAL DISCUSSION
IMPLEMENTATION IN A MECHANICAL WRIST WATCH
During the entire design the integration with a
wrist watch was kept in mind. However, some
adaptations within current watches are necessary
to obtain complete integration. Firstly there are
two bi-directional rotations that must wind the
mainspring. Preferably the two rotations would
be added to allow a single rotation to be passed
on to the reverser and main spring. However, no
mechanisms were found that can add two
rotations without losing energy. The planetary
gear will allow two rotations to be input and has
one output, however it will not add the energy of
the rotations when both are turning at the same
time. Therefore, both bi-directional rotations
were separately passed on via a gear to one of
two reversers. Following this, each uni-directional
rotation will then wind up one of two
mainsprings. For this design it was assumed that
each mainspring has half the energy storage of a
regular mainspring (half the spring constant) and
unlimited winding.
Room for the double mainspring and the two
reversers must made available in the watch
movement. That this is available is proven by
watches that already have two mainsprings, such
as the Cartier ID Two concept watch [22] shown
in Figure 31, or the Glashütte Original PanoMatic
[23]. The second change to the watch movement
is the new orientation of the watch. To be able to
place the watch movement in the plane that was
indicated as optimal plane, a new design of the
watch casing must be made. This must be placed
at almost 90 degrees from the original plane, at
the inside of the wrist. Further research into this
design should indicate whether a strap and casing
can be design which makes it comfortable to wear
a watch in this plane. If this is not possible a
choice to separate the harvester from the face of
the watch can be made. This was discussed in
Chapter 4.F and an example was shown in
Figure 24.
Figure 30 – Two improvements to possibly prevent the
collisions between the links and the mass and rotation
points.
33
 RECOMMENDATIONS
 To obtain more information about the wrist
movements, for further studies it is
recommended to create a logging system that
allows the measurement of daily activities during
a couple of days. These measurements can also
be used to test the assumption that three daily
activities are enough to represent the wrist
movement during an entire day.
 The focus in this study was one of the three
functional parts of an energy harvester – the
motion harvester. However, the current
automatic winding device has shown to have less
that 50 % efficiency when modelled for an
oscillatory motion that should be completely
harvested by the motion harvester [10]. This
indicated that research into improving the
reverser and mainspring is also necessary to
obtain a higher efficiency of the automatic
winding device.
 For further studies it is recommended to make
a new prototype and perform a complete
evaluation of the performance of the 2-DOF
harvester using a motion simulation based on the
measurements. This will allow answering the
question how much more efficient the 2-DOF
harvester is. To obtain realistic results the
prototype should have less friction and bear
closer resemblance to the actual weights of the
final design. Therefore it is recommended to use
different manufacturing methods than used for
this prototype and if possible, use the expertise of
a watchmaker of watchmaking company.
Figure 31 - The Cartier ID Two concept watch has two
mainsprings, visible via the backplate, that power the
movement. Source: blog.perpetuelle.com
34
 In the design of the harvester several things
can be further improved. It would be interesting
to look at an option for avoiding the two collisions
that occur within the mechanism; 1) when the
mechanism reaches full extension and 2) when
the mass collides with the central rotation point.
During these collisions the mechanism loses
energy. Perhaps this can be avoided my using
springs between the links or by using compliant
joints as was visualised in Figure 30. This will also
eliminate friction and remove the need for
lubrication of the joints. Furthermore integration
of the mass with the ends of the second links will
remove the loose proof mass that needs to be
assembled. This will also eliminate the need for a
mechanism to keep the mass correctly
orientated.
7. GENERAL CONCLUSION
A 2-DOF harvester was designed for a
mechanical watch. Measurements of wrist
motion during daily activities were performed.
Based on the collected wrist motion, the
harvestable content of the motion and the
principle components of the motion were
analyzed. We showed that a correctly orientated
energy harvester with the size of a wrist watch
that can harvest two translations is the optimum
between number of DOF and harvestable motion,
containing more than 90 % of the total variance.
A new orientation of the harvester to optimize
harvesting is necessary at an angle of almost
90 degrees from the original harvesting plane.
Based on these results a 2-DOF harvester was
designed to harvest two translations. Using a
4-bar mechanism with a proof mass at the end
translations are transformed into two rotations
that are then used to wind two mainsprings. A
simulation performed to evaluate the 2-DOF
harvester for three different accelerations using a
model without friction, shows an increase of
energy harvested with the new harvester of
36 - 98 %. These results give a good indication of
improved performance when compared to the
original 1-DOF harvester. A prototype with a
40 mm diameter shows that the mechanism can
be fabricated.
BIBLIOGRAPHY & Biological Engineering & Computing, Vol. 37, 377-380,
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2013].

35
APPENDIX I – BACKGROUND ON THE AUTOMATIC WINDING DEVICE
In a mechanical watch, the power necessary to run the watch movement is stored inside the
mainspring. When the mainspring runs down it can be wound by hand. In the automatic watch, wrist
motion is used to wind the mainspring. Therefore the automatic watch is in fact an energy harvester.
The part inside the automatic watch that harvests the wrist motion is called the Automatic Winding
Device (AWD). Although there are differences between the brands, the working principle of an ADW is
the same for each automatic watch. An AWD can be seen in Figure 32. The wrist motion is captured by
the rotor, is transmitted through the reverser and reduction gear train and used to wind up the
mainspring [9].
ROTOR
The rotor is an asymmetric oscillating weight. It functions as the proof mass in a harvester. Due to
the motion of the wrist and therefore also the changing orientation of the gravity, the inertia of the
rotor results in motion around a central rotation point. Only slight differences between the rotors of
different brands and calibres can be found. Several rotors used by different brands can be seen in Figure
33.
MAINSPRING
The motion that is harvested by the rotor is stored in the mainspring, seen in Figure 34. The
mainspring is a flat spiral spring that is encased inside a barrel. The centre of the mainspring is
connected to an axis, the arbor. By turning the arbor the mainspring is wound. The power is then
supplied to the rest of the watch movement via rotation of the barrel. Since the automatic winder
harvests energy continually when worn, it will also harvest when the spring is fully wound. To prevent
breaking the spring is not attached to the barrel, instead there are notches in the barrel where the
mainspring catches. When the spring reaches full wind, the outer end of the spring slips out of the
notch and moves until it catches the next notch. Ideally the mainspring must supply a constant amount
of energy to the movement. To achieve this the spring has a S-shape and much research is put into the
spring material. However, close to the fully or un-wound state the force is not constant [7], as can be
seen in Figure 35. Current mechanical watches usually have a power reserve of around 40 hours, but
watches with 96 hours power reserve are also available. A standard ETA2824 mainspring has been
calculated to store 557.2 mJ of energy [10, 24].
REVERSER AND REDUCTION GEAR TRAIN
The reverser and reduction gear train are placed between the rotor and the mainspring. The
mainspring needs to be turned in a specific direction to be wound, but the rotor moves in two
directions. This transformation is performed by the reverser. The reverser is the mechanism that
transforms the double sided rotation of the rotor into a single sided rotation to wind the mainspring.
There are several mechanisms that can do this. The two that are best known are the pawl-lever

Figure 32– An exploded view of a standard automatic Figure 33 – Several rotors that are found in watches of
winding device used in a mechanical watch. different brands. Source: chessbase.com, watchfinder.com

36
mechanism and the cam mechanism [10]. Two different types of reversers can be seen in Figure 36 and
37. While the reverser ensures that the motion of the rotor is used optimally, not all automatic watches
have a reverser. The spring has a spring constant that must be overcome to be able to wind the
mainspring. This is the function of the reduction gear train; it increases the torque of the rotations to
be able to wind the mainspring.

Figure 34 – The main spring and barrel found in an automatic watch. Source: [7]

Figure 35 – The force-deflection curve for the mainspring. Source: [7].

Figure 36 – The pawl-lever system found inside a Seiko
calibre 7S26. Depending on the direction of rotation of the
rotor, the pawl will either pull or push the second wheel,
resulting in a unidirectional rotation. Source:
watchmaker.com.au
Figure 37 – A reverser. Depending on the direction of rotation of
the rotor A, the reverser E connects with either wheel B’ or B’’,
resulting in a unidirectional rotation of wheel B’’.Source: [25]

37
APPENDIX II – BACKGROUND ON THE HARVESTING PRINCIPLE
Energy harvesting concerns the use of energy available in the ambient environment to power
devices. To explain the principles behind energy harvesting it is easier to use a simple example.
A. THE WORKING PRINCIPLE: AN EXAMPLE
When a brick with weight m is placed on the floor of an empty train carriage and there is no friction,
two things can happen:
 When the train moves at a constant speed, the brick will have the same speed as the train. The
speed of the brick relative to the train is zero.
 If the train changes speed, due to the moment of inertia the brick will have a speed relative to
the train. It will move freely until it reaches the edge of the train.

Figure 38 – The movement of a brick in a moving train. Figure 39 – The movement of a brick in a rotating train.

If there is friction, the brick needs energy to overcome the friction to move. This energy is provided
by the motion of the train. The friction converts this energy into heat. For higher friction the brick will
move less, but more heat will be created. Therefore the following can be stated:
 Without friction the brick moves freely through the train and no heat is created.
 With infinite friction the brick does not move and all energy is converted to heat.
It can be concluded that it is the relative speed between the train and brick that creates heat. If we
could capture this heat, say in a pan to cook an egg, then we would have harvested some of the energy
in the system. To use the motion of the train optimally, we want to capture as much heat as possible.
The amount of heat that is generated depends on:
 The size of the displacement of the brick. Heat is created as long as the brick is in motion. This
depends on two factors:
o The size of the train.
o The size of the relative speed.
 The weight of the brick. A higher weight will result in more friction and thus more heat.
However, this will also result in less motion. For a resonant system an optimum for the mass
can be found for the natural frequency of the train.
If the train were to move over a curved rail, Figure 39, it will have a rotation. During rotation the
brick will move over a circular path, at a distance of the rotation centre. The same principles that apply
to harvesting a translation also apply to harvesting a rotation.
B. THE WORKING PRINCIPLE: IN REALITY
To harvest the motion of the wrist (represented by the train), we need a weight (the brick) that
achieves a speed relative to the frame. This relative speed can be harvested (friction and heat). To be
able to use this energy the energy must be directly used or temporarily stored (the pan).

Table V – The separate parts of an energy harvester.

Automatic winding device Rotor Reverser and gear train Mainspring

Electromagnetic harvester Magnet Magnet & coil Battery or capacitor
Train and brick Brick Friction Pan

38
APPENDIX III – BACKGROUND ON DATA ANALYSIS
A. KINETIC ENERGY CALCULATION
Both translations and rotations work on the mechanism. For a small range of motion of the proof
mass we can state that the energy from a rotation and a translation can be compared using the
equations for the kinetic energy. The kinetic energy is defined as the energy needed to accelerate the
proof mass m to its speed. The kinetic energy of a rotation is dependent on the angular velocity and
the distance between the mass and the rotation point; the arm r. The kinetic energy of translations can
be calculated with Equation 16 and of rotations with Equation 17.
1
𝐸𝑘,𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑠𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 = 𝑚 𝑣 2 (16)
2
1
𝐸𝑘,𝑟𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 = 𝑚 𝑟 2 𝑤 2 (17)
2
Since the mass was not known, the energy per unit mass was calculated. Secondly the calculation
was performed for the three directions in which the translations (𝑣𝑥,𝑦,𝑧 ) and rotations (𝜔𝛼,𝛽,𝛾 ) were
measured. These can be seen in Equations 18 and 19. Since energy does not have a direction, this
calculation results in the relative energy per unit mass.
𝐸𝑖 1 2
= 𝑣 𝑖 = 𝑥, 𝑦, 𝑧 (18)
𝑚 2 𝑖
𝐸𝑗 1 2 2
= 𝑟 𝜔𝑗 𝑗 = 𝛼, 𝛽, 𝛾 (19)
𝑚 2
As seen in Equations 6 and 7, the arm of the harvester has a large influence on the energy that
energy in rotations. The arm of the rotation for a wrist watch is approximately 20 mm, but calculations
were also performed for 2 and 200 mm. In the new design this arm is to be eliminated, the difference
can be seen in Figures 36 and 37. For a circle with radius R, the average arm ravg within this circle can
be calculated. Integrating the area of a circle, multiplied with r, over 0 to R gives the sum of all distances
r within the circle. Dividing this by the integral of the area will result in ravg. Using Equation 20 for a
circle with a 20 mm boundary, gives ravg = 13.3 mm. However, the principle component analysis of this
average arm gave the same result as a device of 20 mm.
𝑅
∫0 2𝜋 𝑟 2 𝛿𝑟 2
𝑟𝑎𝑣𝑔 = 𝑅 = 𝑅 (20)
∫0 2𝜋 𝑟 𝛿𝑟 3

B. PRINCIPLE COMPONENT ANALYSIS

A Principle Component Analysis (PCA) is used to calculate if a dataset can be described with less
variables. The PCA finds a set of orthogonal components that describes the original data, called
principle components. The first principle component contains most variance and the last principle
component contains least. A three dimensional dataset leads to three principle components. The
percentage of the total variance that is present in the principle components can be used to decide how
much principle components are needed to describe the dataset. Usually 80-90% variance is sufficient.

Figure 40 – Schematic of the rotor in the automatic winding Figure 41 – Schematic of the free motion of the proof mass
device. within the boundary.

39
APPENDIX IV – WATCH SIZES AND ETA
A. SIZE AND WEIGHT OF A WRIST WATCH
“The motion harvester must fit within the area of a watch (approximately a circle with a 40 mm
diameter) and can maximally add half the height which is typically 5 mm. Also the mechanism may
double the weight, typically 50 grams, of the movement.” Chapter 4.C.i.
No extensive overview of the size of an automatic movement can be found and not much
manufactures give information concerning size and weight of movements. A small overview of three
different manufacturers can be seen in Table VI [26-28]. It can be seen that there is a large difference
in weight and size of the movements. Also the sizes of four manual movements are shown for
comparison. There are automatic movements that are the same size or even smaller than the four
manual movements that are shown.
A 40 mm diameter was selected as requirement as this was the largest movement found. The largest
height was 10 mm, since the automatic winding device is only a part of the total movement it was
chosen to allow half the height, 5 mm, for the new design. The weight of an automatic movement was
found to be up to 41 grams. To allow some room during the design it was chosen to allow this weight
to be added by the new mechanism.
Table VI – Sizes and weights of several mechanical movements used by three watch brands [26-28].
Brand Caliber/type Height (mm) Weight (gr) Winding type
Tag Heuer Carrera - 41 Automatic
caliber 17 - 28,6 Automatic
16 - 30,4 Automatic
2 - 26,3 Automatic
Patek Phillippe 240 2,53 27,5 Automatic
28-520 7,68 33 Automatic
324 5,78 32,6 Automatic
R27 10,35 32 Automatic
3,8 38,65 Manual
215 3,35 21 Manual
Longines L561 4,8 17,2 Automatic
L635 6,55 33 Automatic
L698 9 36,6 Automatic
L506 4,5 36,6 Manual
L878 4,5 37 Manual

B. CHOICE FOR ETA2824 AS STANDARD MAINSPRING

“The force needed to wind the mainspring is calculated from measurements of a standard ETA2824
mainspring (E=2.3x105 MPa, 400 mm length and 1.23 mm thickness) [9].“ Chapter 4.C.i.
ETA is a brand that makes mechanical watch movements [24]. Many brand used to buy an ETA
movement and then adjust it to fit their specifications. Many ETA movements consist of standard parts.
For these reasons an ETA mainspring is used in this study. The 2824 movement is an automatic
movement with a 4.6 mm height and a 24.6 mm diameter.
[Currently ETA is part of the Swatch group and have decided to produce only movements for the
watch brands within the Swatch group, which include Omega and Longines. This has moved other
brands to start to produce their own movements.]

40
APPENDIX V – ANALYSIS OF BAR MECHANISMS
The conceptual design is a bar mechanism. There are more bar mechanisms that might be able to
transform translations to rotations. To find the best option for the amount of bars, all bar mechanisms
that can transform translations into rotations are show in Table VII. To obtain a complete overview
even mechanism that are not functional or where and added bar does not improve the mechanism are
added.

Table VII - The analysis of the translation-rotation conversion for different bar mechanisms. For more than 5 bars, the same
combinations can be made.
Number of bars
1 2 3 4 5(+)

There are a few important requirements to consider when selecting one of these mechanisms for
the translation-rotation conversion:
 The location of the rotations that must be harvested. These rotations are preferred to be at
the rotation point for easy harvesting.
 The complexity of the mechanism. The mechanism much be as simple as possible, have least
parts possible and have least friction.
 The transformation of translation to rotation. Every translation must be converted into a
rotation by the mechanism.
The mechanisms in the bottom two rows confirm to the requirement of harvesting at the central point.
The mechanisms in these rows with more than 1 linkage also have more than one degree of freedom,
thus can harvest two translations. However, the sliding motion of the weight over the bar will result in
an increase of friction and the need for bearings, eliminating the third row as a solution. This leaves
only the two mechanisms in the bottom row as possible solutions. Since the 4-bar mechanism has least
parts, this is selected as best mechanism.

41
APPENDIX VI – METHODS FOR SIMULATING MECHANISM MOTION
For this study several methods were used to try to simulate the motion of the new 2-DOF harvester.
Three different models were tried. The first model was aimed at comparing the different possibilities
of link lengths and locations of rotation points and to select the best mechanism. When this did not
work the choice was made to use a simple kinematic analysis of the collisions and workspace of the
mechanisms and to base this choice on these aspects. After this a second attempt to model the chosen
2-DOF harvester was made. In the end it was chosen to use ADAMS which is explained in Chapter 5 of
this report. The other methods used are explained below and the encountered problems are indicated
for each of the methods.
For each simulation the following assumptions were made:
 Gravity is included in acceleration data, so not in the model itself,
 The joints have zero mass and zero stiffness,
 The links are solid rods and infinitely rigid,
 The linkage is symmetrical,
 No friction,
 The accelerations of wrist motion were measured on the base, but can be implemented on
the proof mass,
 The initial speed of the mechanism was zero.

Figure 42 – the linkage that the models were based on with the variables used.

A. METHOD 1
For this dynamic modelling method I was helped by Teun Hoevenaars (Mechatronic Systems Design,
PME, 3ME) who provided me with explanation about the method and the different matrixes needed
for the calculations. This method is often used in robotics. The essential difference between the usual
modelling and this model is the following. In robotics the position of the end-effector is known and the
angles that must be actuated at the base must be calculated, in this case the actuation of the end
effector is known (measured accelerations) and the rotations at the base must be calculated.
Additional assumptions for this model were:
 The mechanism is a 6-bar linkage. The base is the 5th bar and the mass is the 6th bar,
 Stainless steel as material for links and extra mass,
 The boundary is a circle with a 2cm radius,
 When a link contacts the side wall the mechanism stops moving, there is no slip,
o No elastic contact -> worst case scenario,
The driving equation for this model is the following equation, with m the mass, c damping, k spring
constant, 𝜃̈ the angular accelerations, 𝜃̇ the angular velocity and 𝜃 the angular position.
𝑚𝜃̈ + 𝑐𝜃̇ + 𝑘𝜃 = 𝐹

42
 This is then transformed for this 6-bar mechanism to matrix form with C = damping matrix, M = mass
matrix, K = stiffness matrix, 𝑞̈ 𝑛 = accelerations, 𝑞̇ 𝑛 = velocity, 𝑞𝑛 = position and 𝑎𝑛 = the measured
accelerations that actuate the end-effector:
𝑞̈ 𝑛 = −𝑀−1 𝐶𝑞̇ 𝑛−1 − 𝐾𝑞𝑛−1 + 𝑀−1 𝐽𝑀𝑎𝑛
𝑞̇ 𝑛 = 𝑞̇ 𝑛−1 + 𝑞̈ 𝑛−1 𝑑𝑡
𝑞𝑛 = 𝑞𝑛−1 + 𝑞̇ 𝑛−1 𝑑𝑡
The input variables were:
 M – the weight of the proof mass,
 A and B – the position of the two rotation points,
 L1 and L2 – the lengths of the first two links,
 ro – the outside diameter of the rods,
 KA and KB – the stiffness of the springs attached to rotation points A and B.

The model did give a result but several problems were encountered. Problems:
 For each angle at the base of the mechanism there are two possible locations of the end-
effector. These are chosen at random, therefor it is possible to see a sudden change in
position of the proof mass of the mechanism during simulation. I could not find a solution
to avoid all of these sudden changes in direction.
 Also in the results of the simulation it was seen that the two sides of the linkage sometimes
“loosen” from each other. The origin of this problem was not found.
B. METHOD 2
A model using the method of the course Engineering Dynamics was made by Wout Ypma, Msc. who
was able to complete the simulation of the new 2-DOF harvester, Figure 43. The 2-DOF harvester can
be modeled as two double pendulums joined at the ends. However another problem was found:
 For each motion placed on the harvester the mechanism would converge into the singularity
where the links are fully stretched, seen in Figure 44. A solution to avoid this singularity was
not found and the choice to use ADAMS was made.

Figure 43 – The variables for the third method. Figure 44 – The singular position of the mechanism.

43
APPENDIX VII – TECHNICAL DRAWINGS OF THE FINAL DESIGN

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