Contactless tracking of humans using non-contact triboelectric sensing technology: Enabling new assistive applications for the elderly and the visually impaired

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

“…(g) Contactless tracking of humans in a smart home using non-contact triboelectric sensing technology (Reprinted with permission from ref. [179]. Copyright 2021 Elsevier).…”

“…Moreover, a multifunctional desktop interactive system is developed by positioning the tapping area to control lights, fans, and speakers wirelessly, which demonstrates as a facile control interface in smart homes. The noncontact/touchless control interface is another noteworthy application, and researchers have developed various interfaces based on humidity sensing [181,182], capacitive sensing [183,184], magnetic sensing [185,186], and triboelectric sensing [179,187,188]. As shown in Figure 4d, Liu et al introduced a magnetic-interaction-assisted hybridized triboelectric-electromagnetic nanogenerator (MAHN) to achieve noncontact control and recognize simple air gestures [177].…”

“…The smart floor monitoring system produces a high prediction accuracy of 96% of a 10-person model, offering a highly secure, convenient, and accurate approach for individual recognition, which is superior to the camera and smart tag-based individual recognition. Recently, as shown in Figure 4g, Anaya et al applied non-contact triboelectric sensing technology to track human motions in smart homes [179], in which the flexible non-contact triboelectric sensors (NCTS) are applied to detecting dynamic external electrostatic charges from human's walking, running, jumping and relative motions of two people within a distance of 1.5 m. Furthermore, a portable accident prevention system integrated with two sensors is developed to avoid visually impaired people's collisions with obstacles and the elderly's unexpected falling. In brief, smart homes integrated with self-powered sensors and self-sustainable IoT systems not only improve the interactivity between humans and machines but also are favorable enhancing humanization and security towards all kinds of users.…”

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

“…Considering the fast development of the energy harvesting/self-powered sensing technology (triboelectric, etc. ), lowpower HMIs can be realized with high convenience, low cost, and self-powered sensing ability to reduce the overall power consumption and extend the lifetime of the system [5,242,243]. Additionally, because of the energy harvesting capabilities, these HMIs can also scavenge the ambient energy and convert it into electricity for potential wireless communication.…”

Spheres Multiple Physical Network‐Based Triboelectric Materials for Self‐Powered Contactless Sensing

“…Non-contact mode triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) can effectively avoid physical contact and reduce triboelectric materials wear, ensuring stable and efficient operation of TENG, [1] which has been widely used in the field of contactless sensing in recent years owing to these unique advantages. Anaya et al [2] constructed a non-contact mode TENG using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and aluminum, which can perform real-time contactless tracking of humans, enabling assistive applications for the elderly and visually impaired. Rana et al [3] designed an charge density and charge storage capacity of triboelectric materials by introducing conductive materials into multiple network structures.…”