Tactile sensor

Cameras tell a robot where an object is. Tactile sensors tell it what is happening the moment it touches. They measure pressure, and sometimes slip and texture, across a small patch of the robot’s skin.

Without them, a humanoid picking up a paper cup either crushes it or drops it, because it has no way of knowing that its fingers made contact a millimeter earlier than expected.

They are also fragile. They sit exactly where the robot bangs into the world all day, which is why Tesla is reportedly moving its fingertip sensors into a removable glove that can be swapped when they fail.