Training tactile sensors to learn force sensing from each other

Abstract

Abstract Humans achieve stable and dexterous object manipulation by coordinating grasp forces across multiple fingers and palms, facilitated by a unified tactile memory system in the somatosensory cortex. This system encodes and stores tactile experiences across skin regions, enabling the flexible reuse and transfer of touch information. Inspired by this biological capability, we present GenForce, the first framework that enables transferable force sensing across diverse tactile sensors in robotic hands. GenForce unifies tactile signals into shared marker representations, analogous to cortical sensory encoding, allowing force prediction models trained on one sensor to be transferred to others without the need for exhaustive force data collection. We demonstrate that GenForce generalizes across both homogeneous sensors with varying configurations and heterogeneous sensors with distinct sensing modalities and material properties. This transferable force sensing capability is also demonstrated in robot manipulation tasks including daily-object grasping, slip detection and compensation with multi-sensor force coordination. Our results highlight a scalable paradigm for cross-sensor robotic tactile sensing, offering new pathways toward adaptable and tactile memory-driven robot manipulation in unstructured environments.