Tactile sensor
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A tactile sensor is a device that detects and measures physical contact information — such as pressure, force, texture, vibration, and slip — by converting mechanical stimuli into electrical signals. Inspired by the human sense of touch, these sensors are engineered using a variety of transduction principles including piezoresistive, capacitive, piezoelectric, and optical mechanisms, and are often fabricated as flexible, stretchable materials that conform to curved surfaces like robot fingers or artificial skin. In robotics and AI, tactile sensors are integrated into robot hands, grippers, and body surfaces to enable dexterous manipulation, safe human-robot interaction, and object recognition. Systems like GelSight and TacTip provide high-resolution surface geometry and force measurements, while tactile gloves and electronic skins help robots learn grasping signatures from human demonstration. Tactile sensing matters because vision alone is insufficient for reliable manipulation — robots must feel contact forces, detect slippage, and distinguish object textures to handle fragile or varied objects safely. As robotic systems take on more complex real-world tasks, tactile perception has become a critical capability bridging the gap between rigid industrial automation and dexterous, human-like robot behavior.
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Tactile Sensing—From Humans to Humanoids
Ravinder Dahiya, Giorgio Metta, Maurizio Valle, Giulio Sandini
Citations: 1777 • 2009
Learning the signatures of the human grasp using a scalable tactile glove
Subramanian Sundaram, Petr Kellnhofer, Yunzhu Li, Jun-Yan Zhu, Antonio Torralba, Wojciech Matusik
Citations: 1118 • 2019
GelSight: High-Resolution Robot Tactile Sensors for Estimating Geometry and Force
Wenzhen Yuan, Siyuan Dong, Edward H. Adelson
Citations: 1102 • 2017
A chameleon-inspired stretchable electronic skin with interactive colour changing controlled by tactile sensing
Ho‐Hsiu Chou, Amanda Nguyen, Alex Chortos, John W. F. To, Chien Lu, Jianguo Mei, Tadanori Kurosawa, Won‐Gyu Bae, Jeffrey B.‐H. Tok, Zhenan Bao
Citations: 905 • 2015
A hierarchically patterned, bioinspired e-skin able to detect the direction of applied pressure for robotics
Clémentine M. Boutry, Marc Negre, Mikael Jorda, Orestis Vardoulis, Alex Chortos, Zhenan Bao
Citations: 888 • 2018
DLR-Hand II: next generation of a dextrous robot hand
J. Butterfaß, Markus Grebenstein, Haoliang Liu, G. Hirzinger
Citations: 814 • 2002
Tactile sensing for dexterous in-hand manipulation in robotics—A review
Hanna Yousef, Mehdi Boukallel, Kaspar Althoefer
Citations: 769 • 2011
Tactile sensing in dexterous robot hands — Review
Zhanat Kappassov, Juan Antonio Corrales Ramón, Véronique Perdereau
Citations: 748 • 2015
A review of tactile sensing technologies with applications in biomedical engineering
Mohsin Islam Tiwana, Stephen J. Redmond, Nigel H. Lovell
Citations: 709 • 2012
Review Article Tactile sensing for mechatronics—a state of the art survey
Muhammad Hisyam Lee, H.R. Nicholls
Citations: 703 • 1999
Triboelectric nanogenerator sensors for soft robotics aiming at digital twin applications
Tao Jin, Zhongda Sun, Long Li, Quan Zhang, Minglu Zhu, Zixuan Zhang, Guangjie Yuan, Tao Chen, Yingzhong Tian, Xuyan Hou, Chengkuo Lee
Citations: 657 • 2020
Tactile-Direction-Sensitive and Stretchable Electronic Skins Based on Human-Skin-Inspired Interlocked Microstructures
Jonghwa Park, Youngoh Lee, Jaehyung Hong, Youngsu Lee, Minjeong Ha, Hyuneui Lim, Sung Youb Kim, Hyunhyub Ko
Citations: 639 • 2014
Recent Progress in Flexible Tactile Sensors for Human‐Interactive Systems: From Sensors to Advanced Applications
Soonjae Pyo, Jae Yong Lee, Kyubin Bae, Sangjun Sim, Jongbaeg Kim
Citations: 611 • 2021
Wearable Microfluidic Diaphragm Pressure Sensor for Health and Tactile Touch Monitoring
Yuji Gao, Hiroki Ota, Ethan W. Schaler, Kevin Chen, Allan Zhao, Wei Gao, Hossain M. Fahad, Yonggang Leng, Anzong Zheng, Furui Xiong, Chuchu Zhang, Li‐Chia Tai, Peida Zhao, Ronald S. Fearing, Ali Javey
Citations: 599 • 2017
Soft Somatosensitive Actuators via Embedded 3D Printing
Ryan L. Truby, Michael Wehner, Abigail K. Grosskopf, Daniel M. Vogt, Sebastien G. M. Uzel, Robert J. Wood, Jennifer A. Lewis
Citations: 576 • 2018
Skin-inspired electronic devices
Alex Chortos, Zhenan Bao
Citations: 569 • 2014
The TacTip Family: Soft Optical Tactile Sensors with 3D-Printed Biomimetic Morphologies
Benjamin Ward-Cherrier, Nicholas Pestell, Luke Cramphorn, Benjamin Winstone, Maria Elena Giannaccini, Jonathan Rossiter, Nathan F. Lepora
Citations: 556 • 2018
A flexible, ultra-highly sensitive and stable capacitive pressure sensor with convex microarrays for motion and health monitoring
Yaoxu Xiong, Youkang Shen, Tian Lan, Yougen Hu, Pengli Zhu, Rong Sun, Ching‐Ping Wong
Citations: 542 • 2020
Dexterous anthropomorphic robot hand with distributed tactile sensor: Gifu hand II
Haruhisa Kawasaki, T. Komatsu, K. Uchiyama
Citations: 538 • 2002
Soft magnetic skin for super-resolution tactile sensing with force self-decoupling
Youcan Yan, Zhe Hu, Zhengbao Yang, Wenzhen Yuan, Chaoyang Song, Jia Pan, Yajing Shen
Citations: 522 • 2021