Sharpa’s IROS 2026 Lineup Connects Robot Touch, Dexterous Hands and Teleoperation

Sharpa introduced three products at IROS 2026 in Pittsburgh: the D01 manipulation robot, W02 dexterous hand and AE01 haptic data glove. Together, they illustrate a connected approach to manipulation: a robot body that senses contact, a hand designed for detailed object handling, and a wearable interface that captures human movement and returns tactile feedback.613

D01: a robot with whole-body touch sensing

D01 combines two seven-degree-of-freedom arms with dexterous hands and electronic skin across the body. Sharpa’s reported specifications include a payload of up to 5 kg per arm, end-effector speed above 10.5 m/s, communication at 1,000 Hz and 0.2 mm repeatability. The company also reports that the body skin samples touch at 100 Hz, senses forces from 0.1 to 20 N and resolves force changes of 0.2 N.67

The purpose of the skin is to give the robot contact information beyond what its hands can sense—for example, when its arm or body is touched. Those figures describe published specifications; they should not be read as independently verified performance results.

W02: a lighter hand with tactile sensing across the palm

The W02 weighs less than 750 g, has 21 active degrees of freedom and is reported to be about 30% smaller than its predecessor. Its fingertips use optical tactile sensors with a 5 mN–30 N force range and 1 mm spatial resolution. Electronic skin extends touch sensing to the fingers and palm; reports list a 0.1–20 N range and 5 mm spatial resolution for the palm area.3710

Sharpa describes the hand’s “zero grasping radius” as a way to handle very thin objects, including string or chopsticks. In practical terms, the design aims to let the fingers close around narrow items that can be difficult to grasp with a larger gap between them.9

AE01: capturing a person’s hand movements and returning touch

The AE01 exoskeleton glove uses 22 encoders to capture hand motion for real-time robot control and demonstration collection. It provides 256 levels of fingertip haptic feedback, and reports say it can be used without user calibration.713

In a teleoperation setup, a person’s hand movements can guide the robot while feedback helps the operator feel contact or grasp force. The captured actions can also be recorded as demonstrations for training; that describes the intended data-collection role, not evidence that the demonstrations by themselves train a particular model.69

What Sharpa demonstrated at IROS

Sharpa showed a stick-catching challenge, whole-body tactile responses and a cocktail-making sequence involving tasks such as adding ice, pouring and shaking. The cocktail demonstration was teleoperated through the AE01 glove, rather than presented as an autonomous bartender. The demonstrations therefore showed different parts of the product lineup: rapid movement and contact response, alongside human-guided multi-step manipulation.1314

These displays differed from Sharpa’s earlier demonstrations. The company had shown autonomous table tennis at CES 2026, while separate coverage describes dessert-making work. At IROS, the cocktail sequence highlighted teleoperation, and the lineup brought the robot, tactile hand and demonstration interface together; it should not be mistaken for another autonomous task demo.2528

The takeaway

D01, W02 and AE01 address complementary parts of dexterous manipulation: whole-body movement and touch, detailed hand contact, and human input with tactile feedback. Sharpa’s IROS demos made that relationship visible, but a live demonstration and published specifications do not establish how the system will perform across tasks or environments beyond those shown.