Samsung is testing electronic skin on its humanoid robot hands

Robot hands that sense like ours do

Samsung's humanoid ambitions are getting a tactile upgrade. The company's Future Robotics Task Force is testing a 0.5mm electronic skin film on robot hands, developed in partnership with materials firm Midas H&T.

Apparently they're targeting a CES 2027 reveal and commercial production in the same year.

The e-skin uses a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) base embedded with pressure and temperature sensors, thin enough to conform to finger joints without restricting movement. In internal tests, the film detected grip force variations as small as 0.1 newtons, a threshold that matters for tasks like handling eggs or passing tools between robots and human coworkers.

Samsung has not disclosed which humanoid platform carries the e-skin in testing, but Samsung's e-skin testing is happening alongside a broader push to commercialize a full humanoid robot system, with the CES appearance expected to show a more complete prototype than what the company demonstrated in 2024.

Tactile sensing is an open problem across the humanoid field. Most current platforms rely on vision and force-torque sensors at the wrist rather than distributed skin-level feedback. If Samsung's film survives the mechanical demands of a working hand — repeated flexion, friction, cleaning — it would give the company a differentiator in dexterous manipulation at a time when that capability gap is one of the main barriers to real-world deployment.

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What the film does

The 0.5mm TPU layer carries a grid of piezoresistive cells that change resistance under pressure. A thin-film circuit routes signals to onboard processing without adding meaningful bulk to the fingertip. Temperature sensing runs on a separate layer, allowing the robot to distinguish hot objects from cold ones during contact ... a safety feature as much as a dexterity one.

Midas H&T has supplied flexible sensor films to consumer electronics manufacturers for several years, mostly for wearable health monitors. The Samsung collaboration represents the firm's first publicly acknowledged robotics application.

CES 2027 and commercial timeline

Samsung's Future Robotics Task Force has told internal partners the goal is a CES January 2027 reveal for a humanoid with e-skin-equipped hands. That's quick: very ambitious.

Commercial production is targeted for the second half of 2027, though that schedule depends on yield rates from Midas H&T's fabrication line, which currently runs at pilot scale.

The company has not announced pricing for a commercial humanoid, nor confirmed whether the e-skin will ship as a standard feature or an optional module.

Why tactile sensing matters now

Skin-level sensing is potentially huge for humanoid robots. Having it should mean robots can apply just the right amount of pressure when holding different objects as well as sense sheering, friction, and slipping, all of which it can then react to just like we do.

But humanoid developers have largely deferred skin-level sensing because it adds integration complexity and failure points to platforms already under engineering stress. The pivot toward it reflects maturing confidence in the underlying mechanics and a recognition that manipulation tasks — the main near-term revenue case for humanoids in factories and warehouses — require richer contact feedback than vision alone provides.

Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, and Apptronik have each cited tactile feedback as a roadmap item without shipping it.

Samsung entering the space with a named materials partner and a concrete production date sets a more specific benchmark for the field. It's also something that makes a ton of sense for a humanoid that might be headed for the home rather than the factory.

Sources

• Seoul Economic Daily
• DigiTimes Asia