XELA Robotics to Showcase Advanced uSkin Tactile Sensors at Automate 2026
June 05, 2026
News
XELA Robotics is planning to introduce a variety of innovative tactile sensor enhancements at Automate 2026 (Humanoid Robot Pavilion, Booth 1888) to deliver a unique human sense of touch. The booth will demonstrate the company’s hardware agnostic uSkin tactile sensor family that has been expanded with abilities that make a more precise and flexible robotic hand.
"Visitors to our stand will see robot hands from Tesollo and Allegro and grippers from Robotiq, i.e. the Hand-E and 2F, together with our innovative uSkin tactile sensors," said Dr. Alexander Schmitz, CEO, XELA Robotics. "Demos will show how easily our sensors can be integrated into various robot hands and grippers."
Booth Demos:
Robotic Fingertip with Nail
- XELA Robotics designed a robotic fingertip with a six-axis, force-sensitive nail, also including 30 tri-axial force sensing points distributed in the pulp. The solution allows the hand to grab thin objects including cards and keys. It enables such complex actions as scraping tape off an object.
uSkin Integration in Universal Manipulation Interface
- The open-source Universal Manipulation Interface (UMI gripper) provides AI for human-robot skill transfer by delivering data collection from daily human tasks, for example picking up a bottle of water and pouring it into a glass. It then transfers that skill to the robot grippers. uSkin provides the ability to add distributed force-vector measurements to the data collection.
Magnetic Interference Compensation
- Magnetic interference compensation removes complex magnetic interference from nearby magnets or ferromagnetic materials.
Enhanced Delicate Grasping Capability
- Visitors to XELA Robotics booth can participate in a cutting-edge pick-and-place demo involving a paper origami crane and a quail egg.
High Durability Models
- XELA modernized its fingertip covers it offers. If damaged, the covers can be exchanged without the need to swap out the sensors or fingertips themselves.
Automatic Weight and Hardness Detection
- Robots equipped with uSkin tactile sensors lifting objects can automatically determine weight and hardness.
Dr. Schmitz will present an overview of the company’s tactile sensor technology on Automate 2026’s Innovation Stage Thursday, June 25 at 11:15am.
For more information, visit xelarobotics.com.
Chad Cox is the Production Editor at Embedded Computing Design. His responsibilities are centered around content creation, writing and editing, and article research and development. Chad covers industry news and events and is known to interact with various industrial leaders via on-premise visits and online interviews. He is responsible for the digital footprint and dissemination of news via social media posts, advertising creation and the production of newsletters including the Embedded Computing Design’s Daily.
He is well versed in many facets of industrial computing including Edge AI, IoT, Processing, Security, Open Source, and more.
Chad graduated from the University of Cincinnati with a B.A. in Cultural and Analytical Literature and holds a master’s in education.
