In our cognition, the world of artificial intelligence always seems cold and rational. They roam in the ocean of binary code, dealing with huge data sets, never tired, and never bothered by emotions. We admire their amazing breakthroughs in the fields of visual recognition and natural language processing, but we never wonder whether their world has multi-dimensional perception like ours.

Nowadays, a new field is quietly breaking this boundary: Haptic AI. It's more than just letting the robot grab the cup or unscrew the bottle cap. The goal of tactile intelligence is to enable AI to "understand" the world through physical contact like human beings.

Imagine a robot arm stroking a piece of cloth. It can not only tell whether it is cotton cloth or silk, but also tell its texture, density and softness. It is not through the optical camera shooting, and then image analysis, but through the ultra-sensitive sensor array installed at the "fingertips", directly feel the subtle changes in the fabric microstructure. These sensors, some of which imitate the Meckel disk of human fingertips, can sense pressure and texture; Others imitate Ruffini's corpuscle, which can capture the stretching and vibration of the skin.

These seemingly minor advances are opening a new dimension for the AI world. In the medical field, tactile intelligent robots can assist surgeons to perform precise minimally invasive surgery. Through tactile feedback, the doctor can "feel" the resistance when the scalpel cuts the tissue or the tension when sewing the blood vessel, which is very important for improving the accuracy and safety of the operation. Material science also ushered in a new revolution. Future AI scientists may no longer need to screen new materials through tedious experiments, but directly "touch" and "feel" the binding strength of different molecules and the ductility of materials in digital simulation through tactile intelligence, so as to quickly design new substances with specific physical characteristics.

However, the real charm of tactile intelligence goes far beyond this. What it brings is a deeper revolution in human-computer interaction. We are no longer satisfied with voice commands or screen clicks. In the future, we can convey more complex and subtle intentions by directly touching smart devices. For example, by stroking your smart bracelet, it can judge your emotional state and give corresponding suggestions according to your heartbeat and skin temperature. Or, shake hands with the characters in the virtual world, and you can even feel the temperature and strength of their palms. This immersive experience will completely subvert our imagination of the meta-universe.

Of course, this road is not smooth. The miniaturization, high sensitivity and durability of tactile sensors, and how to transform complex tactile data into a "language" that AI can understand and learn, are still great challenges for scientists. But this is the charm of this field.

In the ocean of code, AI finally began to extend its "hand" to touch and feel the material world. When it is no longer just a cold data processing machine, but can sense the texture and temperature of the world through "touch", its intelligence will become fuller and more stereoscopic. This is not only the progress of technology, but also an awakening of senses, which indicates that a new era of more real and richer intelligence is coming.

（Writer：Juliy）