OpenTac: open-source ecosystem turns any robot surface into a tactile skin
_krishna_murthy · x · 2026-11-11
OpenTac, from a Johns Hopkins / MIT team (Slepyan, Thakor, Murthy et al.), is being demoed at CoRL 2026 with free sample giveaways. It's an open ecosystem for customizable, scalable, and transferable 3D tactile sensing, covering sensor design, fabrication, readout and simulation (paper arXiv:2610.31661, code open-sourced).
At its core, OpenTac-CAD turns a text description, 2D outline or 3D model into a fabrication-ready sensor for any robot surface: flex-PCB Gerbers plus a 3D-printed shear-bump case, read by a reusable USB board. Every design ships with a sensor manifest used by OpenTac-Sim (simulation), OpenTac-Transfer (cross-design data mapping) and OpenTac-Xampling (high-frame-rate acquisition). Demos cover automatic sensorization of six MuJoCo Menagerie robots including Unitree G1 and Go2, LEAP Hand, AgileX Piper, and Robotiq grippers. Sensors capture normal and shear force, with tactile policy learning support.
Related event: OpenTac Open-Source Tactile Skin Debuts at CoRL 2026(2 posts)→
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