Inside SynTouch, the Mad Lab Giving Robots the Power to Feel

When you think about it, touch is a bizarre sense. Unlike sound or light, tactile properties can be difficult to quantify. You can measure decibels or lumens, but touch is a subjective sense with subjective descriptions, like rough or squishy or cold. Subjective until now, that is. A company called SynTouch, which spun out of the University of Southern California, has created a robotic fingertip that rubs a material and precisely measures the "feel" of it in 15 dimensions, ranging from coarseness to coolness.