Adv. Funct. Mater.: A Battery-Free Wireless Tactile Sensor for Multimodal Force Perception

Title：

A Battery-Free Wireless Tactile Sensor for Multimodal Force Perception

Authors：

Haicheng Gu¹, Bohan Lu², Zhenqiu Gao¹, Shaokuan Wu¹, Liming Zhang¹, Lingjie Xie², Jixin Yi¹, Yina Liu², Baoqing Nie³, Zhen Wen¹* and Xuhui Sun¹*

Institutions：

¹Institute of Functional Nano & Soft Materials (FUNSOM), Jiangsu Key Laboratory for Carbon-Based Functional Materials & Devices, Soochow University, Suzhou 215123, P. R. China.

²Department of Applied Mathematics, School of Mathematics and Physics, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou 215123, P. R. China.

³School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Soochow University, Suzhou 215006, P. R. China.

Abstract：

Multimodal tactile sensors, as key information input channel in human-machine interactions, have faced the significant challenges including high power-consumption, multimodal data fusion, and wireless transmission. In this work, a battery-free multimodal wireless tactile sensor (TC-MWTS) based on tribo-capacitive coupled effect for normal and shear force fusion sensing is proposed, which is enabled by a 3D structure combining a triboelectric sensor and a capacitive sensor coupled with an inductive coil. A triboelectric sensor equipped with contact-discharge structures exhibits 25-fold wireless signal enhancement compared to conventional triboelectric sensors. Based on the characteristics of dual time-frequency domain information existing in the wireless signals, both normal and shear forces can simultaneously be converted into voltage amplitude V and eigenfrequency f, respectively, without crosstalk and complex decoupling signals. The TC-MWTS exhibits a maximum sensitivity of 2.47 V kPa⁻¹ for normal force from 2 to 30 kPa and a sensitivity of 0.28 MHz N⁻¹ for shear force between 0.3 and 1.0 N. Finally, the excellent sensing capability of TC-MWTS to sense complex multidimensional forces in human-machine interaction is demonstrated. This work innovatively proposes a new mechanism and methodology for effectively fusing and processing multimodal tactile information, which may drive the tremendous development of low-power multimodal tactile sensing system.

IF：

18.5

Link：

https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202410661

Editor: Xin Du