Columbia's Yunzhu Li team presents progress and ecosystem of open-source tactile sensor FlexiTac at IROS 2026

At the tactile-themed workshop at IROS 2026, Columbia University's Yunzhu Li team presented progress roughly a year and a half after the open-sourcing of FlexiTac, an open-source flexible piezoresistive tactile sensor. The sensor uses a layered structure of FPC and force-sensitive film and can be assembled in 3 minutes after parts are prepared; the team open-sourced the complete BOM, assembly instructions, and reading software and integrated it into the LeRobot framework. Simulation adaptation requires calibrating only 3 hyperparameters of a spring-damper system.