MISTac

MISTac: A Vision-Based Tactile Sensor for Minimally Invasive Surgery
Robin Koch, Anabella Mascot, Rayan Younis,
Martin Wagner, Stefanie Speidel, Marc Cutkosky, Ingo Sieber, and Roberto Calandra

MISTac is a vision-based tactile sensor designed for use during minimally invasive surgery (MIS). It features a replaceable 8mm sensor tip that is compatible with the trocars used in MIS. A fiber optic bundle allows the use of bulky off-the-shelf components at the proximal end of the sensor. The sensor housing is fully modular for easy repairs and upgrades.

Content

This repository contains the CAD files and BOM for manufacturing the proximal and distal end of the MISTac vision-based tactile sensor, as well as the code used to set its illumination.
Full build guide coming soon.

Citing

If you use this project in your research, please cite this paper:

@misc{koch2026mistac,
      title={MISTac: A Vision-Based Tactile Sensor for Minimally Invasive Surgery}, 
      author={Robin Koch and Annabella Mascot and Rayan Younis and Martin Wagner and Stefanie Speidel and Mark Cutkosky and Ingo Sieber and Roberto Calandra},
      year={2026},
      eprint={2608.14772},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.RO},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.14772}, 
}

License

These design files are licensed under CC-by-NC-SA, as found in the LICENSE file.