About
Contactile

THE INSPIRATION

The human hand is a sophisticated and versatile instrument.

Our hands can be gentle enough to pick a raspberry without squashing it, or hold of an egg without dropping or breaking it. Our hands can also be quite powerful. We can hold heavy objects such as the weight of our own body, and operate heavy tools such as an axe. And we do all this with very high precision and control.

Our mission is to give robots a human sense of touch so that they can use their hands with extraordinary dexterity just as we do.

It is our sense of touch that enables our extraordinary dexterity.

Robots are making the move into unstructured environments where they will need to handle objects that they have never encountered before. And while robotic gripping technologies have come a long way, they are still not able to grip things with just the right amount of force and react to changes in the grip conditions. Robots need tactile feedback to improve their gripping capabilities.

OUR TEAM

We are passionate about tactile sensing

Heba Khamis

CEO, Co-founder

Heba holds a PhD in Engineering, B (Software) Engineering and B Medical Science, from the University of Sydney. She has applied her expertise in biosignal processing, pattern recognition and machine learning in complex biomedical problems including epilepsy, cardiac and autonomic diseases, malnutrition and human tactile physiology. Since 2014, she has been developing tactile sensors for robotic gripping that are inspired by the human sense of touch.

Benjamin Xia

CTO, Co-founder

Benjamin has an Honours degree and Masters from UNSW Sydney in Electrical Engineering. He has expertise in mechanical design, electronics and PCB design, 3D printing, microcontroller programming, and software programming in a number of languages, including MATLAB and Java. He is the inventor of optical instrumentation method core to the Contactile sensor technology and has developed the majority of our hardware and software prototypes.

Stephen Redmond

Co-founder (2019-2022)

Stephen has an Honours degree in Electronic Engineering. He holds a PhD in signal processing and pattern recognition. He has been an academic researcher for 13 years. He held an ARC Discovery, ARC Linkage, and ARC Future Fellowship funding, which started this tactile sensing project, and funding from US ONRG. He is currently the recipient of Science Foundation Ireland Future Research Leaders Award at University College Dublin.

OUR HISTORY

Contactile is a Sydney-based start-up company established in early 2019. We are an innovator in tactile sensors for robots and are enabling intelligent dexterous robotic gripping. Our tactile sensor provides robotic gripping systems with the sensory advantages of the human hand without the physical limitations related to size, strength, environment and fatigue.

Our sensing technology was invented at UNSW Sydney by the founders with funding support from the Australian Research Council and the US Office of Naval Research Global.

Contactile has participated in the CSIRO ON Accelerate 5 program (2019), and the University of Sydney Genesis program (2019), and UNSW Founders 10x program (2020).

SEE OUR TECHNOLOGY

OUR AWARDS

Our Awards and Recognitions

Cicada Innovations Deep Tech Award

2020

The Cicada Innovations Deep Technology Award was awarded to the best advanced technology company at the Tech23 Deep Tech Festival 2020!.

Startup of the Year iAward

2020

The iAwards are organised by the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) – Australia’s peak representative body and advocacy group for those in the digital ecosystem.

ATC Advanced Manufacturing Award

2020

The Australian Technologies Competition 2020 brings experienced entrepreneurs, business builders, angel investors, venture capital funds, commercialisation experts, leading corporates and government representatives together with founders, in a collaborative coaching environment.