# TacO: A Benchmark Evaluation of Tactile Sensors for Object Manipulation

- Source: arXiv cs.RO
- Published: 2026-11-02T05:00:00.000Z
- RoboHot: https://robohot.news/en/items/y80d3vpxf7pkmf2eiedi3uw9o
- Original: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.21976

## Summary

The authors propose the TacO framework to systematically evaluate tactile sensors based on manipulation policy performance, covering four modalities: visual, acoustic, magnetic, and resistive. They train separate policies for three tasks—pick-and-place with unknown mass, object reorientation, and plug insertion—and analyze how sensor properties such as spatial resolution, shear sensing, tactile representation, and material friction affect task performance. The results show that the value of tactile information depends on the sensor modality, material properties, and specific manipulation task, rather than being universally beneficial; the sensors, code, data, and hardware designs will be made public on the project website.