Hardware

GelSight

GelSight is a vision-based tactile sensor technology, developed at MIT by Adelson and colleagues, in which a camera images the deformation of an illuminated elastomer gel pressed against a surface, recovering high-resolution contact geometry, texture, and force cues via photometric stereo. The approach yields per-pixel tactile maps far denser than taxel arrays, and inspired derivatives including GelSlim, DIGIT, and commercial GelSight sensors used on robot fingertips.

Why it matters for physical AI

High-resolution touch turns contact from a binary event into a rich image-like observation that fits naturally into modern visuomotor learning, enabling policies that perceive slip, texture, and in-hand object pose.