Robots that can move, feel, and respond like organisms will bring revolutionary impact to today's technologies. Soft robots with organism-like adaptive bodies have shown great potential in vast robot-human and robot-environment applications. Developing skin-like sensory devices allows them to naturally sense and interact with environment. Also, it would be better if the capabilities to feel can be active, like real skin. However, challenges in the complicated structures, incompatible moduli, poor stretchability and sensitivity, large driving voltage, and power dissipation hinder applicability of conventional technologies. Here, various actively perceivable and responsive soft robots are enabled by self-powered active triboelectric robotic skins (tribo-skins) that simultaneously possess excellent stretchability and excellent sensitivity in the low-pressure regime. The tribo-skins can actively sense proximity, contact, and pressure to external stimuli via self-generating electricity. The driving energy comes from a natural triboelectrification effect involving the cooperation of contact electrification and electrostatic induction. The perfect integration of the tribo-skins and soft actuators enables soft robots to perform various actively sensing and interactive tasks including actively perceiving their muscle motions, working states, textile's dampness, and even subtle human physiological signals. Moreover, the self-generating signals can drive optoelectronic devices for visual communication and be processed for diverse sophisticated uses.

Developing nimble, shape‐adaptable, conformable, and widely implementable energy harvesters with the capability to scavenge multiple renewable and ambient energy sources is highly demanded for distributed, remote, and wearable energy uses to meet the needs of internet of things. Here, the first single waterproof and fabric‐based multifunctional triboelectric nanogenerator (WPF‐MTENG) is presented, which can produce electricity from both natural tiny impacts (rain and wind) and body movements, and can not only serve as a flexible, adaptive, wearable, and universal energy collector but also act as a self‐powered, active, fabric‐based sensor. The working principle comes from a conjunction of contact triboelectrification and electrostatic induction during contact/separation of internal soft fabrics. The structural/material designs of the WPF‐MTENG are systematically studied to optimize its performance, and its outputs under different conditions of rain, wind, and various body movements are comprehensively investigated. Its applicability is practically demonstrated in various objects and working situations to gather ambient energy. Lastly, a WPF‐MTENG‐based keypad as self‐powered human–system interfaces is demonstrated on a garment for remotely controlling a music‐player system. This multifunctional WPF‐MTENG, which is as flexible as clothes, not only presents a promising step toward democratic collections of alternative energy but also provides a new vision for wearable technologies.

Power and electronic components that are self-healable, deformable, transparent, and self-powered are highly desirable for next-generation energy/ electronic/robotic applications. Here, an energy-harvesting triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) that combines the above features is demonstrated, which can serve not only as a power source but also as self-powered electronic skin. This is the first time that both of the triboelectric-charged layer and electrode of the TENG are intrinsically and autonomously self-healable at ambient conditions. Additionally, comparing with previous partially healable TENGs, its fast healing time (30 min, 100% efficiency at 900% strain), high transparency (88.6%), and inherent superstretchability (>900%) are much more favorable. It consists of a metal-coordinated polymer as the triboelectrically charged layer and hydrogen-bonded ionic gel as the electrode. Even after 500 cuttingand-healing cycles or under extreme 900%-strain, the TENG retains its functionality. The generated electricity can be used directly or stored to power commercial electronics. The TENG is further used as self-powered tactilesensing skin in diverse human-machine interfaces including smart glass, an epidermal controller, and phone panel. This TENG with merits including fast ambient-condition self-healing, high transparency, intrinsic stretchability, and energy-extraction and actively-sensing abilities, can meet wide application needs ranging from deformable/portable/transparent electronics, smart interfaces, to artificial skins.

Electronics based on layered indium selenide (InSe) channels exhibit promising carrier mobility and switching characteristics. Here, an InSe tribotronic transistor (denoted as w/In InSe T-FET) obtained through the vertical combination of an In-doped InSe transistor and triboelectric nanogenerator is demonstrated. The w/In InSe T-FET can be operated by adjusting the distance between two triboelectrification layers, which generates a negative electrostatic potential that serves as a gate voltage to tune the charge carrier transport behavior of the InSe channel. Benefiting from the surface charging doping of the In layer, the w/In InSe T-FET exhibits high reliability and sensitivity with a large on/off current modulation of 10 6 under a low drain-source voltage of 0.1 V and external frictional force. To demonstrate its function as a power-saving tactile sensor, the w/In InSe T-FET is used to sense "INSE" in Morse code and power on a light-emitting diode. This work reveals the promise of 2D material-based tribotronics for use in nanosensors with low power consumption as well as in intelligent systems.

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