Progress in wearable electronics/photonics—Moving toward the era of artificial intelligence and internet of things

TLDR

Wearable electronics and photonics have increasingly influenced daily life, from healthcare monitoring to soft robotics, and are rapidly advancing toward AI and IoT integration for greater comfort, convenience, connectivity, and intelligence. This review aims to provide an overview of recent progress in wearable electronics, photonics, and systems, covering emerging materials, transduction mechanisms, structural configurations, applications, and their integration with other technologies. The review summarizes general wearable technologies for sensing, interaction, display, and communication; discusses self‑sustainable systems combining energy harvesting and storage; examines AI integration in wearable systems; and outlines future trends toward multifunctional, self‑sustainable, intelligent wearables in the AI/IoT era. Image.

Abstract

Abstract The past few years have witnessed the significant impacts of wearable electronics/photonics on various aspects of our daily life, for example, healthcare monitoring and treatment, ambient monitoring, soft robotics, prosthetics, flexible display, communication, human‐machine interactions, and so on. According to the development in recent years, the next‐generation wearable electronics and photonics are advancing rapidly toward the era of artificial intelligence (AI) and internet of things (IoT), to achieve a higher level of comfort, convenience, connection, and intelligence. Herein, this review provides an opportune overview of the recent progress in wearable electronics, photonics, and systems, in terms of emerging materials, transducing mechanisms, structural configurations, applications, and their further integration with other technologies. First, development of general wearable electronics and photonics is summarized for the applications of physical sensing, chemical sensing, human‐machine interaction, display, communication, and so on. Then self‐sustainable wearable electronics/photonics and systems are discussed based on system integration with energy harvesting and storage technologies. Next, technology fusion of wearable systems and AI is reviewed, showing the emergence and rapid development of intelligent/smart systems. In the last section of this review, perspectives about the future development trends of the next‐generation wearable electronics/photonics are provided, that is, toward multifunctional, self‐sustainable, and intelligent wearable systems in the AI/IoT era. image