Robot hands have become mechanically sophisticated, but they're missing a crucial sense that humans rely on constantly: touch. That gap is why Shiza Charania founded Midas, a company developing tactile-sensing technology for robotic manipulation. While cameras function as robot eyes and motors provide movement, the ability to feel pressure, texture, and slip has lagged far behind, leaving robots unable to handle fragile objects, deformable materials, and contact-rich tasks that require dexterous control.

Why Can't Robots Feel What They're Touching?

The human hand contains roughly 17,000 touch receptors that continuously transmit information about force, texture, vibration, and slip. In laboratory studies, people have distinguished surface textures with differences measured at about 13 nanometers. Humans use that sensory stream in routine movements that barely register consciously, from inserting a charger to steadying an object as it starts to slip.

Charania observed this gap firsthand while working at 1X Technologies, a humanoid robotics company, where she engineered hardware and test rigs for humanoid robots. She noticed that while robot hands had become mechanically sophisticated, touch sensing had not advanced in the same way. Across the industry, she saw increasingly capable systems relying heavily on vision while lacking the tactile information that human hands use constantly.

"The hand is an incredibly complicated system, but so much of what makes it useful comes from touch. If you build the mechanical structure and give the robot cameras, you still have not recreated what a human hand actually uses to manipulate the world," said Charania.

Shiza Charania, Founder of Midas

What Real-World Problems Does Touch Sensing Solve?

Robots already perform rigid, repetitive tasks effectively in structured environments, but fragile objects, deformable materials, and contact-rich processes remain more difficult. The practical applications where tactile sensing matters include:

• Connector Insertion: Assembling electronics requires precise force feedback to avoid damaging delicate components or misaligning connections.
• Delicate Component Handling: Manufacturing tasks involving fragile parts, such as semiconductors or optical components, depend on tactile information cameras cannot provide.
• Food and Textile Processing: Handling soft, deformable materials like produce, fabric, or baked goods requires continuous feedback about pressure and slip to avoid damage.

Charania's path into robotics was unconventional. At 15, she was building brain-tumor analysis algorithms using computer vision and conducting research at Toronto's University Health Network and Toronto Metropolitan University. She worked in the lab of neurosurgeon Dr. Andres Lozano and conducted tumor-segmentation research under Dr. April Khademi. Her early fascination with how complex biological systems worked eventually shifted from software toward hardware, where she taught herself CAD (computer-aided design) and PCB (printed circuit board) design.

How Is Midas Building Touch Into Robots?

At Midas, Charania is architecting a complete tactile-sensing stack with her founding engineers across multiple domains. The company's approach includes:

• Sensor Design: Developing hardware that can detect pressure, texture, and slip with the precision needed for real-world manipulation tasks.
• Materials Engineering: Creating durable, manufacturable sensor materials that can withstand repeated use in production environments.
• Software Integration: Building algorithms that interpret tactile data and translate it into actionable control signals for robot grippers and hands.
• Practical Deployment Focus: Emphasizing durability, manufacturability, and straightforward integration at a cost that can support wider use across industries.

The company is moving from prototypes toward production, running integrations with robotics companies and growing its U.S. team. Charania's longer-term goal is to make touch a standard sense wherever machines interact physically with the world, including robot grippers, full hands, and data-collection systems.

Charania's route into the field has also shaped how she approaches credibility. She has often been the youngest person in technical rooms, from research labs filled with neurosurgeons and PhDs to humanoid robotics environments and, now, company-building. Her response has been to rely on physical proof: working demos, test rigs, and systems that can be evaluated directly.

"Hardware gives you something concrete to evaluate. You can show the sensor, show the test rig, show the data, and let the engineering speak," explained Charania.

Shiza Charania, Founder of Midas

For Charania, the ambition to add touch to machines grew out of a question she first encountered while studying the human body: what information makes complex physical behavior possible? Years later, the answer she is pursuing is no longer centered on the brain. It is in the hand. As automation expands into tasks that require handling fragile and unpredictable materials, tactile sensing may become as essential to robotics as vision has already become.