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Contact does not always deform surfaces, especially when interacting with liquids and soft objects. However, most existing tactile sensors rely on surface deformation to infer contact. Excited to share LightTact, a visual-tactile fingertip sensor that makes contact directly visible. It provides: - Deformation-Independent Sensing: contact is detected optically, not... inferred from surface deformation. - High-Contrast Raw Images: non-contact pixels stay near-black. - Pixel-Level Contact Segmentation: robust across materials, forces, appearances, and external lighting conditions. This project was co-led with Boda ( Grateful to all co-authors for their contributions, and many thanks to Yuxiang Yang for the insightful discussions. We will present LightTact at RSS 2026 in Sydney next week! Paper: Open-source:show more

Changyi Lin

1,055 subscribers

65,715 views • 4 months ago •via X (Twitter)

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9 Comments

Al Bert4 months ago

how is this different than gelsight?

Kurt Wolf4 months ago

Does it still work when the lights are off?

Nick Parker4 months ago

Very cool trick!! Have you done any sim/search ish work yet to find other front optic shapes that are compatible with this? It’s a bit incompatible with meaningful surface deformation in fact right?

Nick CleanCode4 months ago

Really cool sensor! Sensing contact with water and cream without deformation... that's genuinely impressive. Makes me wonder where this leaves manufacturing workers though.

Priya Sen4 months ago

this is so cool, i need this to stop me from crushing my delicate propagation roots

Michelle Lovato4 months ago

this is awesome!!!

AI Mastery Guide4 months ago

Detecting contact optically instead of relying on surface deformation makes a lot of sense for liquids and soft objects that barely deform at all.

Darren Dawson4 months ago

FITR is fine but what happens when the screen is scratched over time?

Frame4 months ago

optical contact sensing is smart. We like the portability angle for multi embodiment.

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Seeing touch without pressing down! 🫆 Most tactile sensors rely on deformation. Press down, deform the sensor, measure the deformation. But light contact, touching water, cream, soft films, doesn't deform anything. The sensor sees nothing. LightTact flips the approach. It uses optical detection instead. An ambient-blocking configuration suppresses external light and internal illumination everywhere except at actual contact points. Only scattered light from true contact gets through. The results? High-contrast raw images. Non-contact pixels stay near-black. Contact pixels show the natural appearance of whatever's touching. This works across material properties, contact forces, surface colors, and lighting conditions. Water, facial cream, thin films, liquids, all become visible the moment they touch. The sensor outputs spatially aligned visual-tactile images. Vision-language models can read them directly. Here's the paper: Changyi Lin and team - hats off ;) ~~ ♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news →

Seeing touch without pressing down! 🫆 Most tactile sensors rely on deformation. Press down, deform the sensor, measure the deformation. But light contact, touching water, cream, soft films, doesn't deform anything. The sensor sees nothing. LightTact flips the approach. It uses optical detection instead. An ambient-blocking configuration suppresses external light and internal illumination everywhere except at actual contact points. Only scattered light from true contact gets through. The results? High-contrast raw images. Non-contact pixels stay near-black. Contact pixels show the natural appearance of whatever's touching. This works across material properties, contact forces, surface colors, and lighting conditions. Water, facial cream, thin films, liquids, all become visible the moment they touch. The sensor outputs spatially aligned visual-tactile images. Vision-language models can read them directly. Here's the paper: Changyi Lin and team - hats off ;) ~~ ♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news →

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Techniahqrobot | humanoid robots

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For those who think the ball can't be in contact with the palm when getting to set point: I present Simone Fontecchio, who's fingers are not in contact with ball until the moment of the release. Dame and Wemby also do this, to make a few.

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LB 1-2 Step Tackling Progression - Linebackers should focus on using the near foot and near shoulder when initiating contact with a ball carrier. - Players must overemphasize swinging their arms in an uppercut motion to generate power through the contact point. - A core fundamental is to get a leg and take a leg, which involves squeezing and attempting to lift the opponent's leg during the tackle. - Coaches should look for players to have their face in contact and aimed at the center of the ball carrier's mass. - After making contact, defenders should overemphasize driving their feet for at least five steps to finish the play. - The tackling progression moves systematically from static contact to taking one step into contact and then two steps back to build consistency. AJ Cooper, LB Coach, Arizona State AJ Cooper #glazierclinics

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290,388 views • 6 months ago

Holy…S😳 This isn’t fabric. It’s electronic skin,woven with dense fiber and textile sensors that can detect pressure, touch, deformation, and subtle contact changes in real time. Now imagine humanoid robots covered in it,especially on dexterous hands. humanoids could truly touch and understand the physical world and even humans. (from Shanghai JQ INDUSTRIES )

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