What is tactile sensing in robotics?
Tactile sensing gives robots a sense of touch, measuring contact, pressure and force on fingertips or 'electronic skin' so they can handle objects and people safely.
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Definition
Tactile sensing is the measurement of physical contact. Robots use fingertip arrays, electronic skin, force/torque sensors and vision-based tactile sensors.
Why it matters
Vision alone fails when objects are hidden by the hand itself or when force matters. Multisensory models like NEURA's Neuron AI explicitly add touch to the model input. See dexterous hands.
Frequently asked questions
What is electronic skin?
A flexible layer of sensors covering a robot's hand or body that detects contact and force across its surface.
Which specs matter for tactile sensors?
Force range (e.g. millinewtons to tens of newtons), spatial resolution (mm), sampling rate (Hz) and durability.
How do robots use touch data?
To adjust grip, detect slip, confirm task completion and, increasingly, as an input to AI models alongside vision.
Coverage
Boston Dynamics gives Atlas a four-finger hand built for mass production
Atlas's new hand has 13 degrees of freedom, no pinkie and direct-drive joints designed for sim-to-real training, as Hyundai starts training Atlas in Georgia and Rohit Prasad becomes CEO.
DH-Robotics debuts a 13-DoF direct-drive five-finger hand with swappable sensors
The 735 g ADH-5-13 has 13 active degrees of freedom, fingertip tactile sensing, ±0.2 mm repeatability and modules that can be replaced without taking the hand apart.
Sharpa's IROS trio: a skin-covered robot, a 21-DoF tactile hand and a haptic data glove
Sharpa launched D01, a dexterous robot with body-wide electronic skin, W02, a hand about 30% smaller than its predecessor with 21 active degrees of freedom, and AE01, a 22-encoder haptic glove for teleoperation data.
PSYONIC's touch-sensing Ability Hand now plugs into Universal Robots' Gen 7 cobots
PSYONIC and Universal Robots integrated the six-motor, 30-sensor Ability Hand with UR's new g-Series arms and PolyScope X, programmable from the teach pendant.
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