Hardware

Fingertip Sensor

A fingertip sensor is a tactile sensing element mounted at the distal end of a robotic finger to measure contact properties such as normal and shear force, contact location, vibration, and local geometry. Technologies include capacitive and piezoresistive arrays, barometric domes, and vision-based elastomer sensors like GelSight and DIGIT, which image the deformation of a gel pad to recover high-resolution contact maps.

Why it matters for physical AI

Vision alone cannot resolve slip, contact force, or occluded geometry at the moment of grasp; fingertip sensing supplies the feedback signal that makes learned manipulation robust to the last millimeter of uncertainty.