Sharpa's IROS trio: a skin-covered robot, a 21-DoF tactile hand and a haptic data glove

In short: At IROS 2026 in Pittsburgh, Sharpa launched three products that cover the full manipulation stack: a body (D01), a hand (W02) and a way to collect training data (AE01).

D01: a robot that feels contact

• About 1:1 arm payload-to-weight ratio, end-effector speed above 10.5 m/s, 1,000 Hz communication, 0.2 mm repeatability.
• Electronic skin across the body: 100 Hz tactile sampling, 0.1–20 N range, 0.2 N resolution, so it can sense collisions or catch falling objects.

W02: a smaller fully tactile hand

• 21 active degrees of freedom, about 30% smaller than the earlier W01.
• Fingertip Dynamic Tactile Array: 5 mN to 30 N, 1 mm spatial resolution; skin on most of the hand: 0.1–20 N, 5 mm resolution.
• "Zero grasping gap" for thin objects like chopsticks, and IP54 protection.

AE01: a data glove with force feedback

22 encoders capture hand motion for real-time teleoperation; 256 levels of haptic feedback per fingertip let operators feel grip force. It is calibration-free.

Why it matters

Hands are where most humanoid demos still fail. Sharpa's bet is that touch everywhere (not just cameras) plus better human data collection is how robots learn contact-rich work. The specs are company claims; field performance is still to be shown.