Sensate Robotics

Sensate Robotics develops multi-modal tactile sensors and robotic gripping systems intended to give machines a sense of touch alongside machine vision. Its product line comprises the PolySkin sensor, a tactile sensor that reads pressure, slip, texture and material properties in real time at the contact surface; the Sensate Gripper, a custom end-effector built around PolySkin with modular two-, three- or four-finger layouts on opposing jaws, closed-loop grip-force control and a quick-change mount for standard robot flanges; SpiraVision 3D, a perception system pairing a 3D camera with a proprietary AI model to identify items on a line and direct the gripper; and the Pick-E Sorter, a drop-in robotic cell combining vision, tactile sensing and edge AI for postharvest handling and quality inspection.

The company's initial application is postharvest fruit handling, inspection and packing, where it positions tactile sensing as a complement to vision-only grading. Avocados are described as the beachhead crop and apples as an active expansion crop, with stone fruit, mushrooms, tomatoes, berries and citrus listed on the roadmap. Under a NASA SBIR Phase I contract, Sensate is also developing the Sensate Fingertip, a multi-modal tactile sensor for extreme environments that integrates force, thermal and conductivity sensing in a compliant elastomeric structure, using LED-phototransistor arrays for force detection, thermistors and a Peltier device for thermal regulation, and a conductive elastomer layer for material classification, with feasibility work on diffuse optical tomography and thermal effusivity sensing.

Business model

Sensate Robotics sells hardware: tactile sensors, tactile end-effectors and a complete drop-in robotic cell deployable into existing packing lines. The gripper is positioned both for the company's own Pick-E Sorter workcell and for integrators building their own cells. Early-stage development is also supported by federal non-dilutive research funding through the NASA SBIR program.

Traction

The company reports being in the pilot-partner recruitment stage, with no deployments disclosed. It cites an I-Corps discovery model informed by more than 150 customer discovery interviews, and modeled per-cell economics of roughly $930,000 in net annual savings, about 95% grading accuracy, around-the-clock operation and output equivalent to four full-time workers. It received a NASA SBIR Phase I award of $156,122 in 2025 and describes itself as a Techstars '26 company backed by NASA and NSF.

Latest developments

In 2025 the company received a NASA SBIR Phase I contract (80NSSC25C0344) worth $156,122 for a multi-modal tactile sensor for extreme environments, the Sensate Fingertip, running from September 15, 2025 to March 27, 2026, with Nicholas Wettels as principal investigator. The website lists the company as Techstars '26 and is actively recruiting avocado and apple pilot design partners.