Human-Centred Intelligent Wearable Devices

Dear Colleagues,

The development of wearable devices is accelerating through advances in micro/nanofabrication, flexible/stretchable materials, multimodal integration, and foreground algorithms. This Special Issue of Micromachines solicits original research articles, system papers, and perspectives on the design, fabrication, modeling, and characterization of wearable devices, textile-embedded sensors, and haptic interfaces, spanning MEMS/NEMS transducers (capacitive, piezoresistive, piezoelectric, triboelectric, and optoelectronic) and actuators (vibrotactile, electrotactile/electrostatic, microfluidic/pneumatic, thermoelectric, and olfactory). We particularly welcome end-to-end contributions that bridge wearable devices with human-in-the-loop validation, emphasizing intelligence, context-awareness, human–computer interaction, and real-world deployment. 

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Novel micro/nano devices: Flexible/stretchable transistors, passive components (capacitors/inductors/resistors), insulating/conducting films, energy harvesters, and robust interconnects fabricated at low temperature on polymer, textile, or biodegradable substrates.
• Multimodal integration: Heterogeneous integration of multi-modal sensors (bio-electrical, biochemical, inertial, optical, acoustic, and gas), on-device signal conditioning, wireless modules, and micro-actuators.
• Algorithms for hardware-in-the-loop: Signal processing and calibration, transfer/domain adaptation, meta-learning, few-shot learning, self-supervised and few-shot learning across users/devices/placements; federated and privacy-preserving learning.
• Haptic control and perception modeling: Model predictive and adaptive control for vibrotactile/thermo/electrostatic/microfluidic actuation; perception-anchored controllers using JNDs, masking, and multisensory integration; and stability/safety under human contact.
• System-level evaluation: Comparative baselines, ablations, and ecologically valid user studies quantifying usability, accessibility, ethics, privacy, and long-term stability across health, rehabilitation, AR/VR/MR interaction, training, sports, cultural heritage, and everyday mobile scenarios. 

Submissions should report clear performance metrics (e.g., sensitivity, bandwidth, spatial resolution, latency, drift, and power), provide device- and system-level comparisons or user testing, and discuss trade-offs among performance, functionality, wearability, and usability. By synthesizing contributions across engineering and design, this Special Issue aims to accelerate translation from benchtop prototypes to robust, human-centric wearable systems with measurable real-world impact.

Dr. Shaoyu Cai
Dr. Yushan Pan
Dr. Yuki Ban
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Micromachines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• virtual/augmented/mixed reality (VR/AR/MR)
• wearable sensing
• haptic devices
• multisensory interface
• multimodal interaction
• sensor fusion
• on-device inference
• e-textile
• MEMS/NEMS
• bioimpedance
• PPG/ECG/EMG/SCG
• vibrotactile actuators
• electrotactile/electrostatic actuation
• thermo-haptics
• microfluidic haptics