We’ve digitized sound. We’ve digitized light. But touch, maybe the most human of our senses, has stayed stubbornly analog.
That might be about to change, thanks to programmable matter. Or programmable fabric.
In this TechFirst episode, I speak with Adam Hopkins, CEO of Sensetics, a new UC Berkeley/Virginia Tech spinout building programmable fabrics that replicate the mechanoreceptors in human fingertips. Their technology can sense touch at tens of microns, respond at hardware-level speeds, and even play back touch remotely.
This could unlock enormous change for:
• Robotics: giving machines the ability to grasp fragile objects safely
• Medical training and surgery: remote palpation and high-fidelity haptics
• Industrial automation: safer and more precise manipulation
• VR and simulations: finally adding the missing digital sense
• E-commerce: touching clothes before you buy them
• Remote operations: from hazardous environments to deep-sea machinery
We talk about how the technology works, the metamaterials behind it, why touch matters for AI and physical robots, the path to commercialization, competitive landscape, and what comes next.
00:00 – Can we digitize touch?
00:45 – Introducing Synthetix
01:10 – How programmable touch fabrics work
02:15 – Micron-level sensing and metamaterials
04:00 – The “programmable matter” moment
06:05 – Why touch matters more than we think
07:30 – Emulating human mechanoreceptors
09:30 – What digital touch unlocks for robotics
10:40 – Medical simulations and remote operations
12:45 – Why touch is faster than vision
14:20 – Humanoids, walking, stability, and tactile feedback
15:30 – Engineering challenges and what’s left to solve
17:00 – Timeline to first products
18:20 – Manufacturing and scaling
19:30 – First planned markets
21:00 – Durability and robotic hands
22:20 – Consumer applications: e-commerce and textiles
24:00 – Will we one day have touch peripherals?
25:15 – Competition in tactile sensing and haptics
27:00 – Why today is the right moment for digital touch
28:00 – Final thoughts