A Conceptual Footstep-Energy-Harvesting Wearable for Persistent Personal Safety and Location Tracking

This preprint presents a conceptual framework for a wearable safety system that utilizes footstep-based energy harvesting to support persistent low-power personal safety and location-tracking functions. The proposed approach focuses on survivability and autonomy, rather than high-power energy generation or device charging. The framework explores the integration of piezoelectric elements within footwear to harvest mechanical energy naturally generated during walking. The harvested energy is intended to sustain low-power electronics, such as emergency location beacons, motion-aware safety indicators, or intermittent tracking signals, particularly in scenarios where conventional power sources may be unavailable. Importantly, this work does not propose a replacement for batteries or a method for charging high-consumption devices. Instead, it emphasizes time extension, redundancy, and resilience in safety-critical situations. Ethical considerations, privacy constraints, and realistic energy-scale limitations are explicitly acknowledged. This paper is intended as a defensive publication to stimulate further research and discussion in the area of wearable safety systems, low-power energy harvesting, and resilience-oriented design, rather than as a deployment-ready or experimentally validated solution.