With the rapid development of artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, the concept of human-machine interaction (HMI) is also active in people's vision, and continues to enrich the way of information exchange among people, machinery and external information environment. At present, the control of machinery and system mostly need contact connection, but this traditional connection faces mechanical fatigue, wear and other problems caused by mechanical contact. In order to solve this problem, it is of great significance to develop a kind of self-powered, real-time and non-contact sensor which can be directly and seamlessly combined with the interaction interface and is applied to the information interaction between machinery and environment. The self-powered photodetector ensures the accuracy, fast stability and long distance of information transmission and mechanical control through optical communication. Besides, it ensures the real-time and continuity of information reception through self-drive, perfectly solves the above problems, and provides a new idea for the selection of HMI interface in the Internet of Things.

Recently, Shen's group at the State Key Laboratory of Superlattice, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has designed a Mechano-optical communication system based on a self-powered flexible woven photodetector. The novel in-situ vertical growing Te@TeSe nanowire arrays were prepared by simple vapor phase transfer deposition on flexible and braidable fibers. Based on this material, they fabricated a self-powered, flexible and woven photodetector. This novel photodetector not only shows a good optical response (the performance is 400 times higher than before the improvement), but also is flexible, braiding, and good stability. The excellent performance is also proved by theoretical calculation and simulation. In addition, the researchers design a Mechano-optical communication system: through the near-infrared light encoding information, through the photodetector recognition and conversion, to achieve the control operation of the manipulator and other machinery. The results entitled "Near-infrared Light Triggered self-powered Mechano-Optical Communication System using Wearable Photodetector Textile" was published in Adv. Funct. Mater. (DOI: 10.1002/adfm.202104782).

 
Figure 1 The Mechano-optical communication system