Rat Whiskers Intrigue Researchers

Are they going to give robots hairy arms and legs to tell them when they are too close to something?

I've heard this notion about mammals with vibrissae using them to find their way through openings and such--the "torquing thing"--...seems like forever; but never seen one scintilla of empirical evidence that this is true. Nor does there seem to be any connection between vibrissa length and animal head or body size. So I wonder what torquing a whisker will discover if its raison d'etre has nothing to do with torquing.