A Delta‐Parallel‐Inspired Human Machine Interface by Using Self‐Powered Triboelectric Nanogenerator Toward 3D and VR/AR Manipulations

Abstract

in diverse application fields, for example, entertainment, robotics, [3] virtual reality/ augmented reality (VR/AR), [4] smart factory, and so on. [5-7] Beyond that, HMI can even be extended to medical rehabilitation, [8] extreme environmental operation, [9] remote education, telemedicine, and other fields. [10,11] With the aid of technology advance, the effectiveness and intuitiveness of interaction are more demanding. The solutions of HMI are switching from the conventional control terminals, such as keyboard, touchpad, and joystick, toward more diversified and creative alternatives. As a result, many new interaction mechanisms have been developed to satisfy the need for efficient and intuitive interaction. [12] For instance, vision recognition can identify facial features and realize human motion capture to complete motion mapping. [13,14] Evolving together with the fast-growth of wearable electronics and IoT, modern HMI are developing toward self-powered capability [15-17] and flexible wearable compatibility. [12] Self-powered electronics are of increasing importance due to their environmentally friendly and self-sustainability, providing an possible solution in alleviating the global energy crisis and environmental pollution. [18-22] Many self-powered electronics have been developed by integrating different energy harvesting technologies, such as electromagnetic, [18-20] piezoelectric, [21,22] and triboelectric. [17,18,23-26]. Based on the coupling of triboelectrification and electrostatic induction, triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) have been demonstrated as promising candidates [27-33] for various selfpowered sensing or self-driven controlling [16,17,25] applications. For example, Luo reported a flexible and durable wood-based TENG for self-powered sensing in athletic big data analytics. [34] It can be used to smart sport monitoring and assisting. It also can be used to promote the development of big data analytics in intelligent sports industry. TENG-based self-powered technology provides a creative way to realize HMI [35,36] because of its superior advantages such as self-generated signals, high output sensitivity, simple but diverse configurations, low cost, various material applicability, and flexibility. [34,37,38] In the past few years, there have been many HMI prototypes reported by using triboelectric mechanisms. [16,25,31,35,39-41] In recent years, human-machine interface technology has entered a period of rapid development in the global scope. It has gradually expanded from the initial field of medical rehabilitation to engineering bionics, virtual reality, space technology, deep-sea assignments, atomic energy technology, remote education, and other areas. Herein, an innovative, self-powered delta-parallel human-machine interface (DT-HMI) for 3D sensing and control is proposed. By using three pairs of triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) sensing gears based on both contact-separation and sliding modes of triboelectric effect, the positive and negative rotation of the gears and rotation angles ca...

Recent Progress in the Energy Harvesting Technology—From Self-Powered Sensors to Self-Sustained IoT, and New Applications

“…(e) A Delta-parallel-inspired human-machine interface by using self-powered triboelectric nanogenerators toward 3D and VR/AR manipulations (Reprinted with permission from ref. [261]. Copyright 2020 American Chemical Society).…”

Advances in Smart Sensing and Medical Electronics by Self-Powered Sensors Based on Triboelectric Nanogenerators

“…In recent years, with the continuous development of smart sensing, human-computer interaction technology has gradually entered a period of rapid development on a global scale and is gradually expanding into various fields. Hou et al [117] developed self-driven delta-parallel human-machine interface (DT-HMI) technology for 3D sensing and control (Figure 6a). They used three pairs of TENG induction gears to obtain information on the positive and negative rotations and rotation angles of the gears through contact separation and sliding modes and thereby calculated the spatial position and movement posture of the DT-HMI.…”

Progress in the Triboelectric Human–Machine Interfaces (HMIs)-Moving from Smart Gloves to AI/Haptic Enabled HMI in the 5G/IoT Era

“…Reprinted with permission from Reference [32], Copyright 2021, Wiley. Reprinted with permission from Reference [33], Copyright 2020, Wiley. Reprinted with permission from Reference [34], Copyright 2019, Springer Nature.…”

“…Compared with piezoelectric-based sensors that are commonly difficult for design customization due to the limitation of materials and complexity of the fabrication process [66][67][68][69], TENGs show the advantages of wide choices of stretchable and flexible materials, e.g., fabric, silicone rubber, plastic thin film, etc., and versatile operation modes, i.e., contact-separation mode, liner-sliding mode, single electrode mode and freestanding triboelectric-layer mode [70,71]. Therefore, TENGs have been successfully designed into various structures for different interactions (Figure 1), such as touchpad interface [35][36][37][38]41,72], auditory-based interface [39,73,74], 3D motion manipulator [33,40,42], etc., and can be further designed as self-powered wearable HMIs, e.g., electronic skin (e-skin) [43,[75][76][77], data glove [32,44], wearable band [45,46], intelligent sock [78,79], breath-driven mask [80], etc., for advanced robotic manipulation, IoT control, VR game control/rehabilitation, personal identification and advanced sport analysis, showing the wide application prospects of triboelectric in HMIs area.…”