Sustainable Interactive Wireless Stickers

Today’s Internet of Things (IoT) devices are bulky, expensive, require battery maintenance, and involve costly installation. In contrast, the interactive stickers introduced in this monograph are low maintenance, inexpensive, and easy to deploy. Focusing on power, form factor, and cost as system design parameters, the author describes stickers that have simple circuitry and can sustain themselves while wirelessly communicating and responding to various human Interactions.

This work introduces four projects. SATURN is a self-powered flexible microphone and vibration sensor based on a triboelectric generator made from inexpensive everyday materials. ZEUSSS stickers extend the SATURN microphone by leveraging simple passive circuitry to add wireless communication capability. MARS stickers improve ZEUSSS by allowing simultaneous multiple-channel communication capability for speech, swipe, and touch interactions in sub-microwatt power. Finally, VENUS adds feedback to the stickers in the form of a low-voltage display powered by the heat of a human finger or ambient light.

The device, circuit, and system innovations described in this book provide a path toward interfaces that can be sustainably instrumented on to everyday physical objects and surfaces.