Progress in wearable electronics/photonics—Moving toward the era of artificial intelligence and internet of things

Abstract

The past few years have witnessed the significant impacts of wearable electronics/photonics on various aspects of our daily life, for example, healthcare monitoring and treatment, ambient monitoring, soft robotics, prosthetics, flexible display, communication, human‐machine interactions, and so on. According to the development in recent years, the next‐generation wearable electronics and photonics are advancing rapidly toward the era of artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT), to achieve a higher level of comfort, convenience, connection, and intelligence. Herein, this review provides an opportune overview of the recent progress in wearable electronics, photonics, and systems, in terms of emerging materials, transducing mechanisms, structural configurations, applications, and their further integration with other technologies. First, development of general wearable electronics and photonics is summarized for the applications of physical sensing, chemical sensing, human‐machine interaction, display, communication, and so on. Then self‐sustainable wearable electronics/photonics and systems are discussed based on system integration with energy harvesting and storage technologies. Next, technology fusion of wearable systems and AI is reviewed, showing the emergence and rapid development of intelligent/smart systems. In the last section of this review, perspectives about the future development trends of the next‐generation wearable electronics/photonics are provided, that is, toward multifunctional, self‐sustainable, and intelligent wearable systems in the AI/IoT era.

Advanced Wearable Thermocells for Body Heat Harvesting

“…The emergence of wearable electronic devices has stimulated the demand for a flexible, light-weight, and high-efficiency power supply system. [1,2] In contrast to more traditional energy storage systems (e.g., batteries [3] and supercapacitors [4] ), which require manual recharging, flexible energy harvesters (including solar cells, [5] piezoelectric polymer generators, [6,7] triboelectric generators, [8,9] and thermoelectric generators [10][11][12][13] ) convert energy from the local environment, including mechanical motion or temperature gradients from the human body, to electrical charge. [14,15] These energy harvesters are environmentally friendly power sources, which potentially provide a pathway toward the elimination of manual device charging and a reduction in battery waste.…”

Advanced energy materials for flexible batteries in energy storage: A review

“…[11][12][13][14][15][16] Such a paradigm shift arises from the breakthroughs in materials and processing techniques, rendering and creating diverse opportunities to integrate electrochemical energy into flexible devices. [17][18][19][20] Flexible batteries have been the research of interest due to their potential to enable electronic products more bendable, adaptable, and comfortable. [21][22][23][24][25] These versatile functionalities stimulate the development of Internet of things (IoT), roll-up displays, implantable medical robots, wearable electronics.…”

Implantable and Wearable Neuroengineering Education: A Review of Postgraduate Programmes

“…Some examples in [44], [45] literally bring these applications to the palm of our hands, combing wearable devices and deep learning techniques computationally efficient to run in smartphones, as a means of repeated monitoring and tracking of individuals during their daily living activities, which is of great importance for treating chronic diseases [45]. Let us remark that, although most artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques are usually employed at the gateway side, which is more computationally efficient, the rapid development of these techniques have enabled them to be used on wearables, resulting in more comprehensive and advanced functionalities [46].…”