Highly accurate energy-conserving flexible touch sensors

Abstract

Smart touch sensors are used in many applications, such as the iPhone and some smart home systems. Recent touch sensors perform well in consumer electrical devices; however, there are some drawbacks. For example, most touch sensors have low accuracy for detecting human movements. Many require significant power and have a fixed shape. We propose a flexible, highly accurate, and energy-conserving touch sensor. Our primary contributions are as follows: (1) an energy-conserving touch sensor is developed and tested experimentally; (2) a flexible and arbitrarily shaped touch sensor is designed; and (3) the manufacturing cost is very low and up to 200 touch sensors can be connected to the system. As a result, this energy-conserving touch sensor can be fabricated using common manufacturing processes for consumer electronic devices.