With the great development of the Internet of Things (IoT), the use of sensors have increased rapidly because of the importance in the connection between machines and people. A huge number of IoT sensors consume vast amounts of electrical power for stable operation and they are also used for a wide range of applications. Therefore, sensors need to operate independently, sustainably, and wirelessly to improve their capabilities. In this paper, we propose an orientation and the tilt triboelectric sensor (OT-TES) as a self-powered active sensor, which can simultaneously sense the tilting direction and angle by using the two classical principles of triboelectrification and electrostatic induction. The OT-TES device consists of a rectangular acrylic box containing polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) balls moved by gravity. The output voltage and current were 2 V and 20 nA, respectively, with a PTFE ball and Al electrode. The multi-channel system was adopted for measuring the degree and direction of tilt by integrating the results of measured electrical signals from the eight electrodes. This OT-TES can be attached on the equipment for drones or divers to measure their stability. As a result, this proposed device is expected to expand the field of TES, as a sensor for sky and the underwater.
Keywords: orientation sensors; self-powered systems; tilt sensors; triboelectric sensors.