Tactile Sensing

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Overview

Tactile sensing studies how to measure contact properties such as force, shape, texture, slip, and material, giving robots information that cameras cannot provide during occlusion or direct interaction. Systems use optical gel sensors, resistive and capacitive arrays, magnetic or fluidic skins, and acoustic or event-based sensors; learning methods range from CNNs and transformers to self-supervised representations and physics-based reconstruction. Researchers evaluate these approaches on force estimation, material recognition, contact localization, slip detection, and manipulation tasks, with growing attention to cross-sensor transfer, tactile simulation, and combining touch with vision, language, or proprioception. A central challenge is making results reliable across sensor designs, contact conditions, and real-world tasks, where calibration, data scarcity, durability, and safety remain important constraints. The field also continues to test when tactile input improves manipulation enough to justify its hardware and integration costs.

Latest papers

CardsList

139 papers18 papers in the last four weeks, down 14% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Tactus: Tactile & Pose Sensing Glove for Natural Dexterity Data Collection

    Oct 29, 2026Li Guan, Rachael Granberry, Sahar Aseeri +101Tactile SensingTactile Sensing for Robotic Manipulation

  2. OpenTac: An Open Ecosystem for Customizable, Scalable, and Transferable 3D Tactile Sensing

    Oct 22, 2026Ariel Slepyan, Geeta Chandra Raju Bethala, Jiafeng Gu +12Tactile SensingRobotic Tactile Sensing

    Johns Hopkins University · Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  3. VecTile: A Low-Cost Flexible Tactile Array for 3-DoF Force Sensing

    Oct 22, 2026Jian Hou, Xin Zhou, Adam J. SpiersTactile SensingRobotic Tactile Sensing

    All authors are with the Manipulation and Touch Lab, Dept. Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London.

  4. Robotic Physical Comparison of Biologically Motivated and Counterfactual Sensory Arrangements using Biomimetic Skin

    Oct 19, 2026Akihiro Miki, Shun Hasegawa, Yoshimoto Ribayashi +3Tactile SensingRobotic Tactile Sensing

    Department of Mechano-Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan. · AI Center, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Japan.

  5. DenseHap: Dense Hand Haptic Estimation from Monocular Images

    Oct 19, 2026Junhan Xue, Rolandos Alexandros PotamiasHand-Object Interaction DetectionHand-Object Interaction

    Imperial College London

  6. PhantomTac: Hijacking Robotic Tactile Systems with Deploy-and-forget Tags

    Oct 19, 2026Binbin Zhang, Yifeng Zhang, Xiaomeng Chen +1Robotic Tactile SensingTactile Sensing

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai, China · Singapore Management University Singapore

  7. PalmSpace: Towards a Versatile On-Palm Interaction Space through Unified Touch Modeling

    Oct 7, 2026Chentao Li, Mingze Gao, Runze Sun +3Wearable SensingTactile Sensing

    Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, China · Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, China

  8. Hall Effect-Based Tactile Force Detection Sensor for Robot-Assisted Minimally Invasive Surgery

    Oct 7, 2026Charles DeLorey, Michael Brockdorff, Adam Metcalf +3Tactile SensingRobotic Tactile Sensing

    STORM Lab, School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

  9. Tactile Reconstruction of Contact Task Frames and Forces for Hybrid Force/Motion Control

    Oct 7, 2026Antonio Rapuano, Simone Orelli, Barbara Bazzana +2Contact Force EstimationForce-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

    Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy. · Robotics and Mechatronics Department, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Twente, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands.

  10. What the Sleeve Feels: Explainable Machine Learning for Textile Pressure-Based Postural Screening

    Oct 7, 2026Limon Bin Hossain, Md Sadib Rahman AnantaWearable SensingDomain Generalization

    Department of Industrial and Production Engineering, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Dhaka, 1000, Bangladesh

  11. MagCilia: A Compact Magnetociliary Tactile Sensor with 3D Force Sensing for Robotic Contact Perception and Grasping Feedback

    Oct 7, 2026Yu Feng, Hao Wu, Haotian Guo +7Tactile SensingTactile Sensing for Robotic Manipulation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore · Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA · Mechanical Engineering Department, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR, and CAS-CityU Joint Laboratory for Robotic Research, City University of Hong Kong Shenzhen Research Institute, Shenzhen, China

  12. PhysTacGen: Physics-Aware Visual-Tactile Sensor Image Generation

    Oct 6, 2026Guo Tang, Yongtao WangPhysics-Informed Generative ModelingTactile Sensing

    Wangxuan Institute of Computer Technology, Peking University · VGI Labs Co., Ltd.

  13. TacGELLO: Tactile Contact Feedback for a 3D-Printed Teleoperation Leader

    Oct 4, 2026Younsoo Kim, Sangmin Song, Sarath Kodagoda +2Tactile SensingRobot Teleoperation

    University of Technology Sydney, NSW, Australia · Western Sydney University, NSW, Australia

  14. Nudge Before You Push: Physics-Aware Navigation via Tactile Probing

    Oct 4, 2026Xianyao Li, Fang Xu, Ruitong Tian +4Robot NavigationSafe Robot Navigation

    Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering, University of Florida · Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University

  15. RATE: Risk-Aware Tactile Encoding for Contact-rich Robotic Manipulation

    Oct 2, 2026Yuyao Jiang, Haichao Liu, Jiarui Zheng +3Robotic Tactile SensingTactile Sensing

    School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore · Daimon Robotics, Shenzhen, China

  16. SoTa: Soft Tactile Skins for Dexterous Manipulation

    Oct 1, 2026Jingyun Yang, Baiyu Shi, Timothy Yu +6Tactile SensingTactile Sensing for Robotic Manipulation

    Stanford University · Tsinghua University · University of Cambridge

  17. Tactile Perception through Fluid-Solid Interaction

    Sep 29, 2026Arman Goshtasbi, Minke Berghuis, Aida Parvaresh +3Tactile SensingRobotic Tactile Sensing

    SDU Soft Robotics, Biorobotics Section, The Maersk McKinney Moller Institute, University of Southern Denmark, Odense 5230, Denmark · Department of Mechanics of Solids, Surfaces, and System, University of Twente, Enschede 7522 NB, The Netherlands · Department of Materials, ETH Zürich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland

  18. A robust single-sensing-element tactile sensor for concurrent pressure and tackiness detection with real-time signal decoupling capability

    Sep 29, 2026Ying Yang, Mingwei Gu, Jia-Sen Xie +8Tactile SensingRobotic Tactile Sensing

    MOE Laboratory of Bioinorganic and Synthetic Chemistry, GBRCE for Functional Molecular Engineering, LIFM, IGCME, School of Chemistry, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China · Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf e.V., Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research, Dresden 01328, Germany

  19. Uni-VLaT: Whole-Body Tactile Adaptation of VLA Policies for Humanoid Loco-Manipulation

    Sep 28, 2026Zihao Wang, Shutong Liu, Siqi Zheng +5Humanoid Loco-ManipulationTactile Sensing

    Tsinghua University · Beihang University · Communication University of China +1

  20. TacGooseBumps (TacGB): Retrofitting Normal-Only Tactile Sensors with Shear Encoding for Learning Contact-Rich Manipulation

    Sep 27, 2026Wenjie Li, Binyu Yang, Yuxin Chen +2Tactile SensingContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    University of California, Berkeley · Saratoga High School

  21. GlowTact: Simple and Compact Vision-Based Tactile Sensing with High Sensitivity and Spatial Resolution

    Sep 26, 2026Yuxiang Ma, Megha Tippur, Pengfei Ye +4Vision-Based Tactile SensingTactile Sensing

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA · Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

  22. Can a Robot Read Braille? - Learning to Adapt Contact via Imitation Learning for Tactile Braille Recognition

    Sep 25, 2026Xi Chen, Yunlong Shan, Sihan Chen +7Assistive RoboticsContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    College of Mechatronics and Control Engineering, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China · School of Advanced Engineering, Great Bay University, Dongguan, Guangdong, China · Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Drug Metabolism and Pharmacokinetics, China Pharmaceutical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China +4

  23. Tactile Sensing Array for Multi-Phalanx Sensing in Humanoid Hands

    Sep 24, 2026Neel Adwani, Muhaiminul Islam Akash, Rituja Bhattacharya +1Tactile SensingTactile Sensing for Robotic Manipulation

    New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), Electrical and Computer Engineering

  24. Calibration-Free Surface Normals Estimation in Vision-Based Tactile Sensing using Universal Photometric Stereo

    Sep 23, 2026Zdravko Dugonjic, Stefanie Speidel, Roberto CalandraSurface Normal EstimationVision-Based Tactile Sensing

    LASR Lab, TU Dresden, Germany · Centre for Tactile Internet with Human-in-the-Loop (CeTI), Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany · Department of Translational Surgical Oncology, National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), a partnership between DKFZ, University Hospital Carl Gustav Carus, TUD Dresden University of Technology, and Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Dresden, Germany

  25. Norm2Tex: Augmenting Visuo-Tactile Simulations with Texture

    Sep 21, 2026Seongjin Bien, Débora Oliveira Makowski, Roberto Calandra +2Vision-Based Tactile SensingTactile Sensing

    University of Technology Nuremberg, Germany. · Technical University of Dresden, Germany. · Deggendorf Institute of Technology, Germany.

  26. Learning tactile perception from high-bandwidth single-point sensing

    Sep 21, 2026Joseph Rigal, Emmanuel Virot, Caroline PascalTactile SensingTime-Frequency Analysis

    Wormsensing, 2 Rue des Murailles, 38170 Seyssinet-Pariset, France. · Hugging Face, 9 rue des Colonnes, 75002 Paris, France.

  27. Tactile-JEPA: Topology-Aware Self-Supervised Representation Learning for Distributed Tactile Sensors

    Sep 21, 2026Elizaveta Kovtun, Matvey Konovalov, Andrey Sakhovskiy +1Tactile SensingSelf-Supervised Learning

    Sber AI, Moscow, Russia · Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech), Moscow, Russia · HSE University, Moscow, Russia +1

  28. Layered e-skin for Shear Sensing

    Sep 18, 2026Qingzheng Cong, Alexis W. M. Devillard, Abu Bakar Dawood +7Tactile SensingTactile Sensing for Robotic Manipulation

    Queen Mary University of London, E1 4NS, UK · The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London SW7 2AZ, UK · King’s College London, SE1 7EU, UK

  29. DexTouch-WM: Learning Action-Conditioned Tactile World Models from Human Touch for Dexterous Robot Manipulation

    Sep 17, 2026Yan Qin, Yue Chen, Wenwei Lin +9World Models for RoboticsTactile Sensing

    HKUST (GZ) · Xspark AI · PKU +1

  30. TouchSight: Bare-Handed Tactile Prediction from Egocentric Video via Generative Visual Augmentation

    Sep 17, 2026Danyan Zhou, Jinxuan Lu, Jiawei Lin +3Vision-Based Tactile SensingVisual-to-Tactile Prediction

    THU · Xspark AI · HKUST (GZ) +1