Here is actually a much more technical description of how the technology works.  This pretty awesome and the applications for precise movements could improve so many industries.

From the different intensities of the different-colored light, the algorithms developed by Adelson’s team can infer the three-dimensional structure of ridges or depressions of the surface against which the sensor is pressed.

Although there are several ways of measuring human tactile acuity, one is to determine how far apart two small bumps need to be before a subject can distinguish them just by touching; the answer is usually about a millimeter. By that measure, even the lower-resolution, robot-mounted version of the GelSight sensor is about 100 times more sensitive than a human finger.

Compare this to auto factory robots or simple large industrial programmed machines.  tghey can stack boxes or do one task but the ability to change with the environment and on a microscale could be disruptive!

thanks to the team at MIT for this awesome write-up

ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSlimuAC9Cs