Robotics startup Shita raises angel round backed by Huawei's Hubble for sub-1mm photonic-crystal e-skin
量子位 · wechat · 2026-10-13
Shenzhen-based Shita Robotics has closed an angel round with investors including Huawei's Hubble, Shenzhen Capital-affiliated funds and Gaoxuan Investment. Founder and CEO Zhang Wei, born in 1998, holds a joint PhD from SUSTech and City University of Hong Kong; the 50-person team averages age 23.
- Technology: Instead of piezoresistive/capacitive/vision-based tactile sensing, Shita uses flexible photonic crystals (cholesteric liquid crystal elastomers) that change color under pressure, converting mechanical deformation into readable optical signals.
- E-skin design: Combines force-induced color-changing photonic crystals, a transparent interlayer, a flexible TFT photodetector array and a backlight layer—no camera needed—targeting thickness under 1mm and sensing density above 10,000 points/cm², scalable from fingertips to full palm coverage.
- Engineering & commercialization: Its production sensors showed under 5% error across 1 million test cycles; customers include university labs, leading model companies and dexterous-hand makers.
- Tactile control model: A self-developed "tactile cerebellum" works alongside VLA models to adjust force, position and pose from contact feedback, boosting task success rates by up to 100% in internal tests.
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