At the 2026 Converged Intelligent Industry Development Conference, held on September 9th in Wuhan's Optics Valley and co-hosted by the Converged Intelligent Industry Innovation Center and Hubei Science and Technology Investment, Zhu Xiaohui, CEO of Wuhan Huawei Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., shared his insights on the evolving landscape of physical AI interaction. He noted that this topic has sparked extensive discussion within the industry in recent years.

Tactile sensing, as the third major perceptual modality following vision and hearing, is now seeing a surge in application scenarios across hardware, data, and model development. Zhu emphasized that this growth is driving continuous demand for tactile technology. "We believe 2025 to 2027 will be the critical inflection point where tactile sensing forms a flywheel acceleration, as scenarios expand, technology leaps forward, and costs drop sharply. The scale of deployment brings data accumulation and improved user experience. We see tactile sensing as the foundation for a billion-yuan-scale pillar supporting physical AI interaction," he stated.

Zhu illustrated the importance of touch by pointing out that without it, a person struggles to even pick up a match, let alone light it. For robots, tactile perception is the final centimeter needed to achieve human-like operation, bridging the gap in understanding the physical world and enabling dexterous manipulation.