Where the sensor lives is the claim. RIOS's grant US11433555B2 ("Robotic gripper with integrated tactile sensor arrays," issued September 6, 2022; inventors Clinton J. Smith, Christopher A. Paulson, Christopher Lalau Keraly, Matthew E. Shaffer, Bernard D. Casse) fences arrays of tactile sensors integrated into the gripper itself — B25J 15/024 (the gripping head) carrying B25J 13/084 and 13/086 (touch and force sensors used for control). Touch isn't a separate subsystem here; it's in the fingers.
The mechanism is closed-loop tactile grasping: dense touch arrays in the gripping surfaces sense contact pressure and distribution, and that signal feeds control (B25J 9/1694, control using sensed parameters). For dexterity, this is the right architecture — a grasp that can feel its own contact can modulate force, detect slip, and handle delicate or variable objects in ways a blind, position-controlled grip cannot.
For the manipulation beat, integrated tactile sensing is one of the genuinely defensible corners of gripper IP because it's a hardware-plus-control combination that's hard to replicate without infringing. A claim that ties the sensor array's integration to the gripping head fences the structure; tying it to control fences the use. Together they make a moat that a competitor can't avoid by swapping just the algorithm or just the sensor.
From a portfolio angle, RIOS built a focused tactile-manipulation portfolio — this grant sits beside US11273555B2 (multimodal sensor array), US11413760B2 (flex-rigid sensor structure), and US11642796B2 (tactile perception apparatus). That clustering is a deliberate moat around touch-enabled grasping, the kind of narrow-but-deep portfolio a manipulation specialist builds to be acquisition- or licensing-relevant.
Caveats. Tactile sensing for grippers has prior art in academic robotics; the inventive step is the specific array integration and its control coupling in claim 1, not tactile grasping in general. And a sensor-integration claim's breadth depends on how the integration is recited. Read the independent claim for the structural relationship between array and gripping surface.
For the file: a structurally-fenced, control-coupled tactile-gripper grant inside a coherent touch-manipulation portfolio. Pull US11433555B2 and the sibling RIOS sensor patents on PatentBear; read claim 1 for the array-integration limitation — in tactile IP, the integration is the asset.