Digitizing Touch with Artificial Robotic Fingertip

In one embodiment, a system includes a silicone hemispherical dome and an omnidirectional optical system. The dome includes a surface including a reflective silver-film layer. The optical system includes a lens including multiple lens elements with the first lens element in direct contact with the hemispherical dome without airgap. The lens is configured to capture scattering of internal incident light generated by the reflective silver-film layer. The optical system also includes an image sensor configured to generate image data from data captured by the lens. The system also includes non-image sensors. The system further includes processors and a non-transitory memory coupled to the processors comprising instructions executable by the processors, the processors operable when executing the instructions to access the image data from the omnidirectional optical system and sensing data from the non-image sensors and generate touch digitization based on the accessed image and sensing data by machine-learning models.