both sides can be connected together into one single electrode to perform 3D control using a suitable signal detection from the (connected) single electrode. An exemplary architecture for a triboelectric control system 900 for a small vehicle 930 is shown in Figure 9(a). As shown in Figure 9(a), the control system 900 includes a control side 910 and a vehicle side 920 with wireless communication between them. The control side 910 comprises the self-powered 2D-control patch 200 (Figures 5 and 6) for control signal generation, a processing circuit 912 to convert the signal into a square wave, a microcontroller unit (MCU) 914 to count the number of generated peaks according to the rising and falling edges of the square wave (one pair of rising/falling edges corresponding to a single peak), and then send a command signal to the wireless module 916, and a wireless signal transmitter 916 to communicate with the vehicle side 920. A power supply may be used for the operation of the processing circuit 912, MCU 914 and wireless transmitter 916, in order to detect the self-generated voltage signals from the 2D-control patch 200. In some embodiments, energy generated by the triboelectric sensor 200 itself may be used to power the various components. On the vehicle side 920, first the wireless signal receiver 922 will send the received signal from the control side 910 to another MCU 924, and then the MCU 924 will generate respective signals for the driver circuit 926 to control the movement of the vehicle 930 (i.e., going forward/backward, and turning left/right). Figures 9(c-f) depict the triboelectric output from the 2D-control patch 200, and the square wave output after the processing circuit 912. Due to the parallel connection of the processing circuit 912 mainly comprising a comparator circuit, the overall measurement impedance is decreased compared to previous measurements, leading to a reduced absolute value in the triboelectric outputs and smaller value variation of output peaks. It can also be observed that the negative peaks of the generated triboelectric signals are less significant. After the processing circuit 912, the analogue triboelectric outputs are converted into square wave outputs that can be easily recognized by the MCU 914. Through counting the number of the output peaks in a certain period,