Perception

Vision-Based Tactile Sensing

Vision-based tactile sensing is a sensing approach in which a camera inside the fingertip images the deformation of an illuminated elastomer pad pressed against an object, recovering high-resolution contact geometry, force distribution, and slip. GelSight established the technique, and compact open-hardware designs such as Meta's DIGIT made it practical to mount on standard grippers; photometric stereo on the pad yields detailed surface normal maps.

Why it matters for physical AI

Contact-rich skills like insertion, cable routing, and in-hand reorientation are hard to learn from vision alone, and camera-based tactile skins deliver dense touch data in a form that existing visual policy architectures can consume directly.