Thermal Imprinted Self-Powered Triboelectric Flexible Sensor for Sign Language Translation

In this paper, we report the first self-powered thermal imprinted flexible triboelectric sensors (TIFS) for sign language translation (SLT). Innovatively coupling the contact electrification effect with a structure inspired from human skin dermis-epidermis intermesh, the as-fabricated highly flexible sensor exhibited a superior sensitivity of 0.5 V kPa
^-1
with a fast response time less than 20 ms. A fully wireless SLT system including 14 TIFSs and microcontroller unit was successfully demonstrated by converting different signs (alphabets and words) into voice and text on smartphone.