University of Colorado Boulder

Anna Soukhovei

Robotics researcher in the HIRO Group, working on 3D-printed tactile and proximity sensing skins for robots.
Advised by Alessandro Roncone.

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Anna Soukhovei holding a 3D-printed sensor skin

Real-World Robot Demos

About

Research

I design and build 3D-printed tactile and proximity sensing skins that give robots a sense of touch and spatial awareness. My work in the HIRO Group spans the full stack from procedural CAD generation and fabrication to ROS 2 integration, data-driven sensor characterization, and real-time collision avoidance control.

I'm also interested in expressive robot motion, human-robot interaction, and lowering the barrier to whole-body sensing for collaborative robots.

Publications

Selected Papers

GenTact-Prox figure showing skin units on robot

Design, Mapping, and Contact Anticipation with 3D-printed Whole-Body Tactile and Proximity Sensors

Carson Kohlbrenner, Anna Soukhovei, Caleb Escobedo, Nataliya Nechyporenko, Alessandro Roncone

International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2026

arXiv Project Page
Multi-modal sensing skin on robot arm

Improving Sensing Coverage and Compliance of 3D-Printed Artificial Skins Through Multi-Modal Sensing and Soft Materials

Carson Kohlbrenner, Caleb Escobedo, Sayak Ray, Alexander Dickhans, Anna Soukhovei, Nickolaus Jackoski, Lyle Antieau, Alessandro Roncone

ICRA 2026 Workshop: Towards Large-Area Tactile Sensing Skins

arXiv
Dancer performing kinesthetic teaching on Franka robot

Dance2Hesitate: A Multi-Modal Dataset of Dancer-Taught Hesitancy for Understandable Robot Motion

Srikrishna Bangalore Raghu, Anna Soukhovei, Divya Sai Sindhuja Vankineni, Alexandra Bacula, Alessandro Roncone

ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), Workshop on Designing Transparent and Understandable Robots, 2026

arXiv Project Page
Form-fitting sensor skin on robot link

Form-Fitting, Large-Area Sensor Mounting for Obstacle Detection

Anna Soukhovei, Carson Kohlbrenner, Caleb Escobedo, Alexander Gholmieh, Alexander Dickhans, Alessandro Roncone

IEEE-RAS International Conference on Humanoid Robots (Humanoids), Workshop on Advances in Contact-Rich Robotics, 2025

arXiv

Software

Open-Source Projects

GenTact Hybrid Skin

ROS 2 drivers, visualization, and procedural URDF generation for hybrid tactile skin sensors on the Franka Research 3 arm.

ROS 2 Python URDF Tactile
ROS Tools URDF Descriptions

Franka Xbox Teleoperation

Xbox 360 controller interface for real-time teleoperation of the Franka Emika Panda arm.

Python Franka Control
View on GitHub →

Point Cloud Visualization

3D visualization of tactile sensor grid data for debugging and analysis of proximity readings.

Python 3D Viz Sensors
View on GitHub →