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PPS - PressureProfile.com Capturing the sense of touch. Tactile sensing for comfort & fit, performance and efficiency. Accurate, repeatable, real-time data for engineering and R&D.

www.pressureprofile.com At PPS, we specialise in high-resolution capacitive tactile sensing. Our sensor arrays measure pressure, force, vibration, and slip with exceptional repeatability and spatial precision – all in real-time. We enable smarter, more responsive designs in:
🤖 Advanced robotics and grippers
🧤 Wearable tech and ergonomic R&D
🩺 Medical device innovation
💨 Aerodynamic and spray pattern analysis

What sets us apart? Our sensors are thin, flexible, and customisable – built to withstand real-world use without compromising data quality. Whether you're developing the next-gen robotic hand or testing airflow, PPS sensors deliver the tactile feedback engineers and researchers rely on.

23/10/2026

Thirty years after Dr. Jae launched PPS to explore ways to give robots a sense of touch, the automation sector is finally catching up.

In a traditional industrial robot cell, parts are where the robot expects them to be. So, robots can get by on preprogrammed movements or with help from machine vision.

Humanoid robots and systems working in unstructured environments are changing that, shifting PPS’ tactile sensing technology from a niche application to a capability that robotics engineers increasingly consider essential.

Listen to the full episode of “Manufacturing Matters” to hear Dr. Jae explain how tactile technology continues to evolve as the robotics sector finds new ways to use it.

Link to the full video in comments.

21/10/2026

Load a tactile sensor the same way twice and the two readings should match. How closely they match is what gain non-repeatability measures, and it decides how far a calibration can be trusted once testing begins.

In resistive and piezoresistive sensors, the signal comes from a conductive composite. As it compresses, particles inside it touch and separate, and that network does not settle back the same way after every load. A 2014 review by Stassi and colleagues in the journal Sensors identifies temperature sensitivity and hysteresis as the main drawbacks of these sensors, and notes that both can affect the repeatability of measurements.

PPS capacitive sensors measure changes in the gap distance between two electrodes. The electrodes are separated by a proprietary compressible dielectric matrix, which acts as a spring. Because the electrodes have no physical interaction and operate in an elastic region, the sensor stays stable from one load to the next. On TactileGlove II, gain non-repeatability is under 3%.

In a study, that means trial forty can be read against the same calibration as trial one.

Explore how TactileGlove II holds its calibration over time.

Reference: Stassi, S., Cauda, V., Canavese, G. and Pirri, C.F. (2014). Flexible Tactile Sensing Based on Piezoresistive Composites: A Review. Sensors, 14(3), 5296–5332.

PPS turned 30 this month, and we are marking it by looking back at one question that has followed us the whole way: what...
19/10/2026

PPS turned 30 this month, and we are marking it by looking back at one question that has followed us the whole way: what does a skilled hand actually do?

In the late 1990s, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - DARPA, funded research into measuring the hands of expert surgeons, so that virtual simulators could teach their skill. Our answer was a net glove with capacitive sensors on the fingertips and its wires running across the palm.

That work grew into FingerTPS, which was launched as a wireless system in 2008 and has since been used in more than 30 published studies. In 2015, we launched TactileGlove to measure the whole hand. Today, TactileGlove II has 65 sensing elements across the palm and fingers and is used in industry, healthcare and sport.

The full story of both gloves, from the first research prototype to today, is on our website.

Thank you to everyone who has put our sensors to work over the last 30 years.

16/10/2026

Which hand does more of the work when you steer? The common assumption is the dominant one.

Rikiya Shirato and colleagues at Hokkaido Bunkyo University tested it in "Force Distribution Characteristics of the Dominant and Nondominant Hands in Steering Wheel Operation", published in the Asian Journal of Occupational Therapy.

Twenty-seven healthy participants completed a pylon-passing driving simulator task while 12 FingerTPS sensors, six on each hand, sat on the thumbs, finger pulps and palms. Chameleon software recorded the force at every location.

Total, maximum and average forces did not differ significantly between the hands. In both hands the palm carried the largest share of the force, which the authors suggest plays a critical role in steering.

Thank you to the Hokkaido Bunkyo team for measuring force where the hand meets the wheel.

Measuring hand force in a task of your own? Talk to an engineer about FingerTPS.

Reference: Shirato, R., Kishimoto, S., Sugai, R. and Yokouchi, R. (2026). Force Distribution Characteristics of the Dominant and Nondominant Hands in Steering Wheel Operation: An Experimental Study Using High-Sensitivity Capacitive Pressure Sensors. Asian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 22(1), 18–25. DOI: 10.11596/asiajot.22.18

16/10/2026

Pressure is a scalar. Force is a vector. Tactile is a matrix array.

That is how Dr Jae Son explains the sense that most robots still don't have, and the one we use to pick up a cup without crushing it.

Thank you to Winn Hardin at TECH B2B Marketing and Manufacturing Matters for a conversation with Dr Jae, Dr Charles Macleod and robotics industry veteran Stuart Shepherd of Shepherd Solutions Inc. They cover why tactile sensing is getting attention now, how human grasp data collected with TactileGlove can help train robots, and what changes when an assembly robot can feel whether a connector has clicked into place.

Watch the full episode below.

Today PPS turns 30.It began in 1996 with a net glove and three fingertip sensors, built for surgical simulation research...
15/10/2026

Today PPS turns 30.

It began in 1996 with a net glove and three fingertip sensors, built for surgical simulation research. Our founder, Dr Jae Son, had just finished a Harvard PhD thesis on tactile sensing and robot hand control, and PPS was established the same year.

Since then, our sensors have been used in more than 170 peer-reviewed studies. Teams have used them to measure a baseball swing, a curling brush, neonatal resuscitation and how tight a headband is.

The three fingertips grew into TactileGlove II, which has 65 sensing elements per glove and covers the whole hand. And now we are back where we started, with robot hands, and teaching them the sense of touch.

Thank you to every researcher, engineer, customer, partner and colleague who has made these 30 years possible.

Read how PPS began on our website.

Safety standards define what a site helmet must do when something strikes it. They say far less about what it does to th...
14/10/2026

Safety standards define what a site helmet must do when something strikes it. They say far less about what it does to the wearer across a full working day.

Comfort is usually judged through wear trials and feedback. A wearer can report that a helmet feels tight, but is rarely able to say which part of the harness is responsible, or how pressure moves each time the adjuster is wound in.

A small pressure point in a short trial can become the reason a helmet is loosened or taken off later in the day.

The Modular TactileHead measures this on a headform. Its sensor modules sit around the crown, sides and face, so the adjuster can be tightened in steps while you watch where pressure concentrates. Harness and padding designs can then be compared on the same head, and a pressure point can be fixed before tooling is cut.

Talk to an engineer if comfort complaints are reaching you after a helmet has passed testing.

12/10/2026

A scale reads the same whether you stand on a flat floor or on a bed of pebbles. What changes is the contact area, and with it the pressure at every point that carries the load.

That is the difference between force and pressure. As Dr. Jae sets out in his article, force describes how much push or pull is applied and in which direction, while pressure describes how that force is distributed over an area. Traditional sensors report force or pressure as a single value, so two contacts with identical total force but very different distributions look the same in the data.

A tactile array measures that distribution. PPS arranges electrodes as orthogonal, overlapping strips, separated by a compressible dielectric matrix that acts as a spring. Scanning one row and one column at a time measures the capacitance, and so the local pressure, at the point where they cross.

The output is a two-dimensional map of normal pressure recorded over time. Total force and the centre of force can still be calculated from it, so a single dataset tells you how much load there is and where it acts.

Read Dr Jae's full explanation of force, pressure and tactile sensing: https://pressureprofile.com/pps-insights/pressure-force-vs-tactile-explained

Most of what a hand does at work leaves no record. An ergonomist can film a lift and ask how it felt, but the force pass...
08/10/2026

Most of what a hand does at work leaves no record. An ergonomist can film a lift and ask how it felt, but the force passing through the palm and fingers stays invisible.

We have always treated that as a measurement gap, in the same way a camera closed the gap for light and a microphone closed it for sound. "Capturing the Sense of Touch" began as the technical problem in Dr Jae's robotics doctorate at Harvard, and TactileGlove II is one of the most direct answers to it.

The glove carries 65 sensing elements across the palm and fingers and runs wirelessly, so it is worn during the task itself. Researchers at Purdue University have used it to assess injury risk during lifting.
That turns grip into data you can compare between people, tools and tasks, before an injury or a redesign forces the question.

How the glove developed from its first version in 2015 is in the comments.

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