Meta Partners to Commercialize Advanced Touch-Sensing Robot Hand
Meta teams up with GelSight and Wonik Robotics to sell advanced tactile sensors and robotic hands to researchers. The new Digit 360 sensor detects vibrations, heat, and even odors to help AI better understand the physical world.
Meta partners with sensor firm GelSight and South Korean company Wonik Robotics to commercialize advanced tactile sensors for artificial intelligence. These new devices target scientists rather than consumers, as Meta aims to advance research into AI systems that learn about the physical world in richer detail. The flagship product of this collaboration is Digit 360, a robotic fingertip that Meta claims possesses human-level multimodal sensing capabilities.
Digit 360 acts as the successor to Meta's original Digit sensor and digitizes touch signals using an onboard AI chip alongside roughly 18 sensing features. The device utilizes a specialized optical system to capture omnidirectional deformations on its surface, allowing it to detect vibrations, sense heat, and even smell odors. Researchers can apply for early access through a new call for proposals, and the sensor becomes available for general purchase next year.
In addition to the fingertip sensor, Meta collaborates with Wonik to upgrade the Allegro Hand with this advanced touch technology. The new generation of the robotic hand features control boards that encode data from the tactile sensors directly onto a host computer for seamless AI processing. Like the Digit 360, the upgraded Allegro Hand goes on sale next year to further empower scientific exploration.