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Telexistence (tele‐existence) is technology which enables a human being to have a real time sensation of being at a remote location, while giving the person the ability to interact with the remote and/or virtual environments. He or she can “telexist” (tele‐exist) in a real environment where the robot exists or in a virtual environment that a computer has generated. It is also possible to telexist in a mixed environment of real and virtual, which is called augmented telexistence. The concept of telexistence, i.e. virtual existence in a remote or computer‐generated environment, has developed into a national R&D scheme called R‐Cubed (Real‐time Remote Robotics). Based on the scheme the National R&D Project of “Humanoid and Human Friendly Robotics”, Humanoid Robotics Project (HRP) in short, was launched in April 1998. This is an effort to integrate telerobotics, network technology and virtual reality into networked telexistence.

The aim of this paper is to create a sensor that can measure the contact status with high‐resolution than ever.

This paper proposes a new type of optical tactile sensor that can detect surface deformation with high precision by using the principle of optical lever. A tactile sensor is constructed that utilizes the resolution of a camera to the maximum by using transparent silicone rubber as a deformable mirror surface and taking advantage of the reflection image.

It has been found that the sensor can sense the deformation by the object with 1 percent error rate in simulation. In implementation of this time, the error rate results 10 percent.

This sensor can be used with broad applications by combining with other devices. As one of future work, the zero method will be used by using active patterns and get more accurate information.

Using the transparent silicone rubbers the sensor enables very simple and low cost and high‐resolution detection method. In addition, the simplicity of our sensor results various applications. For example, the transparency makes the sensor a light pathway, so the sensor can be a contactless sensor or an interactive device.

The concept of a tactile sensing method is introduced which can utilize the resolution of a camera to the maximum possible extent and can detect surface deformation by using the principle of optical lever.