Disclosed is a tactile sensing and integrated vision system that surmounts problems of existing systems. The tactile sensing skin can be formed into any shape, size, or form factor, including large areas. Computer-implemented algorithms can detect position-orientation and force-torque at landmark points for a given object set. The result is a modular sensing system that is highly scalable in terms of price, quantity, size and applications. Such skin technology and associated software can comprise a sensing package that integrates tactile and visual data with accompanying software for state estimation, situational awareness, and automatic control of machinery. The addition of tactile data can serve to constrain and/or augment visual pose estimation methods as well as provide pose estimation to visually occluded objects.
