Flexible sensor array has attracted widespread attention and brought many opportunities in future applications, such as electronic skin, human–machine interactions, and healthcare monitoring. In this study, we report the flexible triboelectric sensor array (TSA) with cross bar configurated sensing units for human-machine interaction. Bead-on-string sacrificial structure is fabricated by 3D printing directly and optimized based on experimental and numerical studies, and therefore affords excellent performance in constructing the enhanced electrode lines for TSA. With the especially patterning design and optimization, the number of data channels in TSA is reduced, and high output performance can be achieved effectively. Meanwhile, TSA platform exhibits excellent durability, reliability, waterproofness, and presents the ability in real-time sensing and locating of keystroke position and trajectory tracking. For application scenarios, a TSA-based intelligent digital controller is established for importer identification based on temporal perceiver network. We use this controller in robot manipulation to control gestures of both rigid manipulator and soft pneumatic actuator conveniently. The proposed TSA in this work opens a new route in promising applications in security identification, robot manipulation and artificial intelligence. In this study, we report the flexible triboelectric sensor array (TSA) with cross bar configurated sensing units for human-machine interaction. Bead-on-string sacrificial structure is fabricated by 3D printing directly and optimized based on experimental and numerical studies, and therefore affords excellent performance in constructing the electrode lines for TSA. With the especially patterning design and optimization, the number of data channels in TSA is reduced, and high output performance can be achieved effectively. Meanwhile, TSA platform exhibits excellent durability, reliability, waterproofness, and presents the ability in real-time sensing and locating of keystroke position and trajectory tracking. For application scenarios, a TSA-based intelligent digital controller is established for importer identification based on temporal perceiver network. We use this controller in robot manipulation to control gestures of both rigid manipulator and soft pneumatic actuator conveniently. The proposed TSA in this work opens a new route in promising applications in security identification, robot manipulation and artificial intelligence.