On May 14th, Lai Jiancheng was busy from early morning until 3am the next day. On that day, he visited six customers intensively with the company's tactile glove products. Each negotiation usually takes more than 1.5 hours, and the pure meeting time exceeds 10 hours. Lai Jiancheng described the collision of various businesses and technologies as going through six consecutive doctoral thesis defenses.

Lai Jiancheng is the founder of Tujian Technology (Beijing) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Tujian Technology"). Tujian Technology was founded in 2020, focusing on the supply of full chain tactile perception solutions and the construction of embodied intelligent tactile perception big data models. At present, in the field of embodied intelligence, Tujian Technology has laid out three product matrices: "dexterous hand touch", "robot full body touch", and "tactile gloves". These three products all use electronic skin technology, which simply means covering the robot's hands or entire body with a layer of artificial skin with tactile perception ability.

Lai Jiancheng visited 6 clients, covering different fields such as robotic arm manufacturing, embodied intelligent ontology, model training, and data collection. The questions they raised cover almost all technical dimensions that tactile technology may involve, from materials science, structural design, data validity, to circuit power consumption and model training. What impressed Lai Jiancheng deeply was that after this negotiation, all six clients were interested in advancing their next cooperation with Tujian Technology.

Most of the large embodied intelligent robot companies on the market have had in-depth discussions with Tujian Technology. This series of signals convinced Lai Jiancheng that the commercialization of electronic skins is on the eve of an explosion.

Lai Jiancheng clearly felt that the core needs of the customers were highly consistent: the urgent desire for real and effective tactile operation data. And behind this, they hope that robots can transform from concepts and performances to truly 'work' to meet human practical needs.

What is electronic skin?

On May 14th, the American embodied intelligence company Figure AI launched the Figure 03 live streaming challenge. Figure 03 is the third generation humanoid robot released by Figure AI in October 2025, and also its latest model. It adopts a flexible fabric outer layer throughout its body, and its fingertips are equipped with self-developed flexible tactile electronic skin. The official claims that it can sense pressure changes as low as 3 grams.

The task of the robot is to adjust the side of the express bag or box with the label to be placed downwards, and then push it towards the conveyor belt. When the fingers touch the courier bag, if the direction is not correct, the robot will use the thumb, index finger, and middle finger to "pinch" it and flip it over; If the direction is correct, it will cover the courier bag with a slightly arched palm and feed it flat into the conveyor belt. If it is a courier box, the robot will hold the box with both hands and flip it over.

This live broadcast also attracted the attention of Lai Jiancheng, and what he values most is the electronic skin technology that supports robots to accurately complete delicate operations.

Electronic skin is a flexible electronic system that simulates or even surpasses human skin perception capabilities. Essentially, the core of electronic skin is sensor technology, but it is not a single sensor, but a flexible, stretchable, and multimodal sensor array system.

At present, there are various technological routes in the field of electronic skin, including piezoresistive, capacitive, optical, etc. According to a research report by Zheshang Securities, electronic skins are in the early stages of industrialization, and the technological roadmap has not yet converged. The piezoresistive solution is currently the mainstream sensing solution.

Lai Jiancheng believes that the core significance of robots is to become true productive forces, which cannot be separated from a complete tactile perception system.

He cited the scene from the live broadcast as an example: although vision can locate, only by relying on touch can the robot judge the softness and hardness of the package, and then decide whether to use fingers or the entire palm to touch and what kind of force to use to grab it. If the force is too strong, it may damage the objects in the courier bag, which requires tactile perception to complete.

In addition, the safety of robot work is also of utmost importance. Lai Jiancheng said that robots are filled with mechanical structures inside and cannot embed a large number of sensors. Only through the thin and fully covered electronic skin on the surface can they achieve global perception and avoid safety accidents such as collisions. Similarly, the interaction between humans and robots, as well as between robots and their environment, such as handshakes, hugs, and handling, all rely on tactile data collection. Only by filling in the missing tactile dimensions of the current physical world model can the AI training loop be completed, making robot behavior more in line with human habits.

If the electronic skin is not designed according to human logic, it does not conform to the principle of progression, "Lai Jiancheng judged. From work to safety, and then to data interaction, electronic skin is a necessity for humanoid robots and is expected to become a standard configuration in the future.

The first year of commercialization of electronic skins

In 2026, the tactile track is really hot. On May 7th, Tujian Technology announced that it had received over 100 million yuan in financing; Companies such as Pacini Perception, Lingdong Jiaxin, and Moxian Technology are also intensively raising funds; Listed companies such as Fulai New Materials and Hanwei Technology have also entered the market.

Electronic skin is not a new species. As early as around 2000, research on tactile sensing technology had already begun. In 2020, electronic skin entered a period of rapid development based on the maturity of technology, and the explosion of embodied intelligence added a powerful fuel to its development.

Lai Jiancheng has been researching in the field of electronic skins for over 15 years. He said that technology has been constantly developing, but what is lacking is a commercial scenario that can be implemented. The explosion of robots has provided an opportunity for the implementation of electronic skins.

Lai Jiancheng's judgment is that 2026 is the first year of commercialization of electronic skins.

According to a research report by Zheshang Securities, the global electronic skin market (including downstream industries such as healthcare and consumer electronics) is expected to reach approximately 6.3 billion US dollars by 2024. It is projected that the global electronic skin market will reach 31.06 billion US dollars by 2034, with a compound annual growth rate of 17.3% from 2024 to 2034.

In terms of technology, Tujian Technology has chosen the route of "intrinsic stretchable materials+multimodal fusion".

Unlike the mainstream solution of "inserting a large number of sensors into the substrate" on the market, Tujian Technology is taking a different path. The sensing function is directly integrated into the material layer, and the material itself is the sensor, rather than relying on stacking independent sensing units to achieve perception.

Lai Jiancheng said, "It's like evolving from old-fashioned hard screens to flexible screens. Old technology involves inserting light-emitting diodes one by one, while flexible screens are made of materials that can emit light on their own

The intrinsic stretchable elastomer used by Tujian Technology can cover complex and non extensible surfaces such as hands and joints, and use this as a substrate to construct functional layers of different modes, which are fused together to enable a single electronic skin to simultaneously perceive modal information such as normal force, tangential force, proximity, temperature, texture, etc.

This technological route also promotes cost control. According to the company, the raw materials for Tujian Technology's electronic skin are derived from general chemicals. Through independent research and development processes, these "bulk goods" are transformed into stretchable materials, resulting in product prices ranging from a few hundred yuan to several thousand yuan.

Based on this technological capability, Tujian Technology's commercialization map has expanded from the embodied intelligence industry to multiple fields such as smart cars, healthy living, and emotional companionship. In the field of embodied intelligence, full hand tactile solutions and robot body full body tactile solutions have been delivered to leading companies in multiple industries. In the direction of smart cars, applications such as adaptive adjustment of smart seats, recognition of steering wheel grip, and intelligent surface touch have been implemented. Lai Jiancheng revealed that Tujian Technology's intelligent car seats will receive a wave of concentrated deliveries in the second half of this year.

Overall, electronic skins are still in the early stages of market awareness and industrialization. Several top consulting firms have told the Economic Observer that research in this niche field has not yet achieved deep coverage. With the increasing demand in various fields such as embodied intelligence, large models, and data collection, coupled with the continuous increase of industry entrants, electronic skins are about to enter a period of commercialization explosion.