Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) represent innovative human‑computer interaction technologies that bridge virtual environments and the physical world, greatly enriching human sensory experiences. Both technologies have exhibited promising prospects in numerous everyday sectors including entertainment, training, healthcare, and industry. Nevertheless, human users lie at the core of VR/AR systems. Real‑time acquisition of human body movements, postures and physiological signals is indispensable to realize immersive interactions. Conventional wearable sensors largely rely on rigid hardware such as rigid batteries and stiff printed circuit boards, bringing considerable wearing discomfort and hindering natural human movements.
A research team led by Prof. Kai Dong at the Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences has published a review in Wearable Electronics . It charts the rise of triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) fibers as a comfortable, self-powered solution for VR/AR interaction. TENG fibers convert mechanical energy into electricity, offering the possibility of soft, body-conformable interfaces for next-generation human–computer interaction.
“Fibers and textiles are essential to the human body and can be integrated conformally without interfering with daily activity,” says Dong. “We compared TENG fibers with piezoresistive, capacitive, and piezoelectric pressure sensors, highlighting their self-powered operation, high sensitivity, and fast response.”
The authors then detailed single and dual-electrode fiber architectures and a toolbox of scalable fabrication routes—wet spinning, electrospinning, melt extrusion, 3D printing, rope braiding, thermal drawing, and dip-coating.
“An advantage of TENG fibers is that they fuse sensing in a single soft, wearable device,” Dong says. “Woven into garments, they act as virtual buttons and foldable keyboards, visualize sports motions and vital signs such as pulse and breathing, recognize hand gestures—including a sign-language-to-speech system with 98.63% accuracy，and control virtual characters in games through wristbands, smart socks, and self-powered dance mats.”
The authors believe future work should pursue three improvements and three reductions: improve wearing comfort (lighter, thinner fibers), raise electrical output, and broaden real-world applications, while reducing crosstalk between fibers, minimizing environmental interference from temperature and humidity, and lowering manufacturing cost. “Overcoming these hurdles will be essential to move TENG fibers from laboratory demonstrations into comfortable, reliable, and practical VR/AR products,” adds Dong.
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Contact the authors:
Lele Li, College of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, PR China, lilele@zzu.edu.cn
Kai Dong, Beijing Key Laboratory of High-Entropy Energy Materials and Devices, Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 101400, PR China, dongkai@binn.cas.cn
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Wearable Electronics
Literature review
Not applicable
Weaving the future of virtual reality/augmented reality with triboelectric fibers for self-powered sensing
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.