Feel Robot Feels: Tactile Feedback Array Glove for Dexterous Manipulation

1Shanghai AI Laboratory, 2 University of Science and Technology of China, 3 The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 4 Shanghai Jiao Tong University
* Equal Contributions, Corresponding Author

Overview

Teleoperation is a key approach for collecting high-quality, physically consistent demonstrations for robotic manipulation. However, teleoperation for dexterous manipulation remains constrained by: (i) inaccurate hand–robot motion mapping, which limits teleoperated dexterity, and (ii) limited tactile feedback that forces vision-dominated interaction and hinders perception of contact geometry and force variation. To address these challenges, we present TAG, a low-cost glove system that integrates precise hand motion capture with high-resolution tactile feedback, enabling effective tactile-in-the-loop dexterous teleoperation. For motion capture, TAG employs a non-contact magnetic sensing design that provides drift-free, electromagnetically robust 21-DoF joint tracking with joint angle estimation errors below 1°. Meanwhile, to restore tactile sensation, TAG equips each finger with a 32-actuator tactile array within a compact 2 cm² module, allowing operators to directly feel physical interactions at the robot end-effector through spatial activation patterns. Through real-world teleoperation experiments and user studies, we show that TAG enables reliable real-time perception of contact geometry and dynamic force, improves success rates in contact-rich teleoperation tasks, and increases the reliability of demonstration data collection for learning-based manipulation.

Tactile Feedback

Tactile sensing and shape mapping performance across various end-effectors. Comparison of raw sensing inputs (i) and physical rendering outputs on TAG (ii) across various robot end-effectors (right). TAG effectively translates diverse sensor geometries into coherent tactile feedback: (a) LeapTac: linear ridge; (b) Inspire Hand: circular area; (c) XHand: dual contact points; (d) GelSight Mini and (e) TacSL: complex shapes.


Contact Shape Discrimination

Inspire Hand

Leap Hand & LeapTac


Glove Evaluation

Exoskeleton glove tracking performance. (a) Experimental setup for joint-tracking. (b) Real-time tracking results for discrete and continuous trajectories. (c) Long-term stability test over 1000s of operation. (d) Statistical distribution of instantaneous tracking errors with Gaussian fit.

Real-Time Teleoperation

Xhand

UR5e


Multimodal Control of a Smart Desk Lamp

Power Toggling (Short Press)

CCT Adjustment (Press & Turn)

Brightness Adjustment (Turn Only)

More Teleoperation Tasks

Filament Pinching and Pull-out

Pick & Tilt a Pocky Stick

Multi-level Spring Compression

Potato Chip Pick-Place

Design of the TAG

TAG makes a system-level contribution by integrating accurate motion capture and high-resolution tactile feedback into one practical teleoperation interface.

BibTeX

@article{jia2026feel,
  title   = {Feel Robot Feels: Tactile Feedback Array Glove for Dexterous Manipulation},
  author  = {Jia, Feiyu and Niu, Xiaojie and Yang, Sizhe and Ben, Qingwei and Huang, Tao and Zhao, Feng and Wang, Jingbo and Pang, Jiangmiao},
  journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.28542},
  year    = {2026},
}