# GelTip: A Finger-shaped Optical Tactile Sensor for Robotic Manipulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.05404 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05404/

## Key facts

- Cited by 15 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 12 Aug 2020.

## Built on by (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [Aligning Cyber Space with Physical World: A Comprehensive Survey on Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06886/) (2024)
- [General In-Hand Object Rotation with Vision and Touch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09979/) (2023)
- [DenseTact: Optical Tactile Sensor for Dense Shape Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.01367/) (2022)
- [Sim2Real Manipulation on Unknown Objects with Tactile-based Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12170/) (2024)
- [TextToucher: Fine-Grained Text-to-Touch Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.05427/) (2024)
- [A soft thumb-sized vision-based sensor with accurate all-round force perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.05934/) (2021)
- [Visual-Tactile Multimodality for Following Deformable Linear Objects Using Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00117/) (2022)
- [ConViTac: Aligning Visual-Tactile Fusion with Contrastive Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.20757/) (2025)
- [DexSkin: High-Coverage Conformable Robotic Skin for Learning Contact-Rich Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18830/) (2025)
- [Multimodal perception for dexterous manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.14298/) (2021)
- [NLiPsCalib: An Efficient Calibration Framework for High-Fidelity 3D Reconstruction of Curved Visuotactile Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.09319/) (2026)
- [Towards Design and Development of an ArUco Markers-Based Quantitative Surface Tactile Sensor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08398/) (2023)
- [Generating Future Observations to Estimate Grasp Success in Cluttered Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07877/) (2023)
- [The Role of Tactile Sensing for Learning Reach and Grasp](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20367/) (2025)
- [Transparent Fragments Contour Estimation via Visual-Tactile Fusion for Autonomous Reassembly](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20290/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Sensing contacts throughout the fingers is an essential capability for a robot to perform manipulation tasks in cluttered environments. However, existing tactile sensors either only have a flat sensing surface or a compliant tip with a limited sensing area. In this paper, we propose a novel optical tactile sensor, the GelTip, that is shaped as a finger and can sense contacts on any location of its surface. The sensor captures high-resolution and color-invariant tactile images that can be exploited to extract detailed information about the end-effector's interactions against manipulated objects. Our extensive experiments show that the GelTip sensor can effectively localise the contacts on different locations of its finger-shaped body, with a small localisation error of approximately 5 mm, on average, and under 1 mm in the best cases. The obtained results show the potential of the GelTip sensor in facilitating dynamic manipulation tasks with its all-round tactile sensing capability. The sensor models and further information about the GelTip sensor can be found at http://danfergo.github.io/geltip.