Contactile is a UNSW Sydney spin-out company established in mid-2019. Our sensing technology was developed with funding support from the Australian Research Council and the US Office of Naval Research Global. We are an innovator of world-leading tactile sensors for robots that enable smart dexterous robotic gripping. We are a sensor + haptics company specializing in tactile sensors for real-world robotic applications. Off-the-shelf grippers lack the sense of touch required to perform intelligent gripping. Tactile sensing is the final frontier in robot dexterity. Contactile gives robots a human sense of touch – enabling intelligent and dexterous grip. Contactile sensors allow grippers to apply the optimal grip force to objects of different weights, sizes, and friction without additional programming.
Our tactile sensor is made of an array of soft pillars which can be deflected independently. Our revolutionary patented optical technology allows each pillar to sense 3D deflection, 3D force, and 3D vibration. Torque is measured by analyzing the distribution of forces across the array. By analyzing the pillar movements in real-time, the onset of slip can be detected and friction estimated.
The human hand is a sophisticated and versatile instrument. Our hands can be gentle enough to pick a raspberry without squashing it or hold an egg without dropping or breaking it. Our hands can also be quite powerful. We can hold heavy objects such as the weight of our own body, and operate heavy tools such as an axe. And we do all this with very high precision and control. It is our sense of touch that enables our extraordinary dexterity. Robots are making the move into unstructured environments where they will need to handle objects that they have never encountered before. And while robotic gripping technologies have come a long way, they are still not able to grip things with
B2B
1 to 25
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Scaling Up
2019
Consumer Electronics
Intelligent Sense of Touch
Increase Productivity
Increase Efficiency
Analytics
Production
Service
Yes
Active
Robotics and Control
Machine Learning
Machine Perception
Natural Language Processing
Automated Planning and Search
Software
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- Contactile Wins Advanced Manufacturing Award
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$2.5M
Company was founded 2019 and it took almost 3 years (May 2022) to raise first external round
Investors
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Heba Khamis
CEO, Co-founder
Benjamin Xia
Co-Founder
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