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Tangent Robotics

Tangent Robotics

"Human grade dexterity for robot hands"

Manufacturer
Software/Algorithm

New York City spin-out of Columbia Engineering building tactile multi-finger robot hands and learned dexterity policies; raised a 4.5M pre-seed round in 2026.

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Company Overview

Tangent Robotics is a New York City company developing multi-fingered robot hands, fingertip touch sensors and learned control policies for precision manipulation. It describes its focus as the fine motor skill layer of robotic dexterity: the hardware and software that let a robot carry out small, contact-rich operations such as threading, connector mating and gear installation rather than coarse pick-and-place. The company is based in Manhattan and was spun out of the Robotic Manipulation and Mobility Lab at Columbia Engineering.

The co-founders are Pedro Piacenza, chief executive; Matei Ciocarlie, chief science officer and a Columbia Engineering robotics professor; and Ioannis Kymissis, a Columbia Engineering professor who consults on unconventional electronics. Tianjian Chen is chief technology officer, and Henrik Christensen of UC San Diego sits on the advisory board. According to the company, team members have worked on robotic touch sensing, designed hands for NASA's Assistive Free Flyer robots and co-authored the original Willow Garage manipulation stack for ROS.

The hardware deliberately does not copy the human hand. The TR01 is a two-finger hand whose kinematics let it reproduce a human operator's fingertip movements during teleoperation; the TR01 Heavy upgrade of August 2026 adds stronger joint motors giving more than 20 N at the fingertip and a relocated, higher-resolution palm camera. The TR02, shown in June 2026, adds a third finger and a palm for 10 degrees of freedom in total (four in the thumb, three each in the index and middle fingers) and carries a Popcorn sensor in each fingertip plus an offset palm camera. Popcorn is the company's optical touch sensor: infrared LEDs on two plates joined by titanium flexures measure plate displacement, which a learned model maps to force, detecting contact down to about 0.1 N at a 250 Hz read rate. Fingertips contain no electronics and are cheap to replace.

On the software side, Tangent trains imitation-learning policies (diffusion policies with transformer backbones) that fuse camera images with touch and proprioception. In a May 2026 post it reported autonomous container flipping, SD card pickup, threading, unthreading and gear installation on the TR01 after roughly 30 to 40 teleoperated demonstrations per task, about one hour of collection each, and showed that touch input raised success rates on the harder tasks compared with vision alone.

On 30 September 2026 the company announced a USD 4.5 million pre-seed round led by Fly Ventures with Toyota Ventures as co-lead and participation from Logos Fund and Sparked Ventures. It said the funds would go toward manipulation skills for demanding manufacturing environments, naming assembly, wiring, connector mating, gasket seating, snap fitting and the disassembly, inspection and reassembly of equipment as target work. No customers or pilot sites have been named.

Capabilities & Activities

Primary type & automation activities this supplier delivers:

Applications & Industries

Product Categories

Products & Solutions

TR02 Hand

Three-finger, 10-DOF robot hand with a palm, fingertip touch sensors and a palm camera for in-hand manipulation.

TR01 Heavy Hand

Upgraded two-finger TR01 hand with stronger joint motors and a faster, higher-resolution palm camera.

Popcorn touch sensor

Optical fingertip force sensor using IR LEDs and titanium flexures, detecting contact down to about 0.1 N.

Partnership & Notable clients

Associating Events

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Contact Tangent Robotics

WEBSITE

https://www.tangentrobotics.ai

EMAIL

[email protected]

HEADQUARTERS

New York City , New York  10001

United States

Company Facts

Founded

-

Primary Role

Manufacturer

Company Size

-

Primary Region

North America

Annual Sales

-

Funding Stage

Early-Stage VC

Funding Total

$ 4,500,000

Keywords

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