Tesla Optimus tactile sensor patent US 2026/0310299 A1 published: flexible sensing skin that conforms to curved finger surfaces

On October 8, the US Patent and Trademark Office published Tesla patent application US 2026/0310299 A1, covering a three-dimensional flexible tactile sensor array with multimodal sensing and scalable manufacturing methods. The patent presents two manufacturing paths: first printing conductive areas on TPU, PET, or polyimide film and then thermoforming, or first forming the curved surface and then printing directly; overlapping conductive areas form independent sensing pixels, covering both capacitive and resistive sensing modes, and it states that when there are enough pixels, object type can be detected by touch alone, with target applications extendable to the robot's whole body.