The ability to feel is central to how humans interact with the world. We rely on our sense of touch to hold a pen, find keys in a pocket, or judge the texture and softness of an object often without needing to look. In contrast, most robotic systems still operate largely by vision alone. When humans operate robots remotely, such as during telesurgery or in hazardous environments, the lack of realistic touch feedback severely limits precision, safety, and intuitiveness. This project addresses this gap by developing a new generation of tactile technology that allows users to physically “feel” what a robot touches, no matter how far away it is.
The project’s goal is to create a system for real-time remote touch, where tactile information sensed by a robot is faithfully reproduced on a human operator’s skin. This requires compressing the rich, high-resolution data captured by advanced tactile sensors into meaningful cues that humans can intuitively interpret. To do this, the project draws inspiration from how the human nervous system processes touch. By analyzing large databases of skin deformation patterns recorded during contact with different materials and surfaces, the project identifies a compact set of “tactile primitives”—basic units of touch perception that can be combined to recreate complex sensations.
These tactile primitives will be implemented in a new haptic device that deforms the user’s skin in precise patterns to simulate the feeling of touching real objects. For example, subtle lateral skin stretches may evoke sensations of slipperiness, while vertical pressure patterns may recreate a sense of hardness or softness. The project will test and refine these sensations in human-user experiments and integrate them into a full remote-touch system. This setup will link a robotic manipulator equipped with a tactile sensor to a haptic interface worn by a human user, enabling true bidirectional interaction through touch.
By combining insights from neuroscience, robotics, mechanical engineering, and computer science, the project takes a highly interdisciplinary approach to a pressing technological need. Its results will have significant scientific, societal, and industrial impacts. In the medical field, remote tactile feedback could improve the precision and safety of robotic surgery by enabling surgeons to feel tissue properties from a distance. In hazardous environments such as nuclear plants or space missions, operators could perform delicate manipulation tasks with much greater confidence. The technology also holds promises for prosthetics, helping users better perceive and control artificial limbs.
In addition to developing new hardware and software tools, the project will make all core results publicly accessible. A comprehensive, labeled database of tactile interactions will be released open-source, fostering collaboration and accelerating progress in tactile sensing research. The methods developed for compressing and reconstructing tactile data will also be made available, along with a tactile processing toolbox that others can build upon.
The project supports the EU’s strategic objectives in robotics, digitalization, and human-machine interaction. It will boost Europe’s leadership in haptics technologies and robotics, with clear paths to application in healthcare, assistive technologies, manufacturing, and beyond. By enabling robots to touch and humans to feel, this project opens new frontiers for safer, more intuitive, and more human-centered technology.
