GelSight and Meta AI launch Digit 360 tactile sensor

According to foreign media reports, GelSight and Meta AI, pioneers in tactile intelligence technology, announced the launch of Digit 360, an artificial fingertip-shaped tactile sensor that can provide rich and detailed tactile data by digitizing touch with human-level accuracy. Digit 360 will expand the field of tactile sensing research and mark the next stage of the partnership between GelSight and Meta AI. Previously, the two companies collaborated to launch the Digit tactile sensor in 2021.

Digit 360 is a fingertip-shaped tactile sensor equipped with more than 18 sensing functions that will drive advances in tactile research and allow researchers to combine various sensing technologies or separate individual signals for in-depth analysis of each mode. This new tactile-specific optical lens can see the imprint around the artificial fingertip and capture more sensitive details of the surface of the object being touched. Over time, researchers can use Digit 360 to develop artificial intelligence that can better understand and simulate the real world, including the physicality of objects, human interactions with objects, and contact physics. Digit 360 greatly exceeds previous sensors and can detect tiny changes in spatial details and capture forces as small as 1 millinewton.

Digit 360 leverages GelSight’s digital tactile sensing technology, which features superhuman sensitivity and micron-level resolution. GelSight’s unique elastic and imaging-based tactile sensing solutions digitize the sense of touch, enabling robotics engineers to develop solutions to analyze any surface regardless of material type or reflectivity, complex object manipulation, and many other dexterous tasks.

“GelSight and Meta AI share a common vision to make touch sensing more ubiquitous and accessible,” said Youssef Benmokhtar, CEO of GelSight. “Digit 360 will advance the digitization of touch and unlock new applications in robotics by enabling the ability to capture omnidirectional deformations of the fingertip surface.”

In addition to improving the dexterity of robots, this groundbreaking sensor also has potential applications in medicine, prosthetics, virtual reality, telepresence and more. For the virtual world, Digit 360 can help better achieve virtual interaction with the environment, making it possible to more realistically represent the properties of objects beyond their visual appearance. All code and designs developed using Digit 360 will be open sourced by Meta AI.

“Since launching Digit in 2021, we’ve observed that each touch interaction has a unique profile generated by the mechanical, geometric, and chemical properties of the surface,” said Jitendra Malik, FAIR Research Scientist Director at Meta. “By leveraging multimodal signals, Digit 360 can act as a peripheral nervous system for robots and will help scientists advance their research to build AI that can learn richer models of the world.”