Latest / The Robotics Podcast with Fexingo: Autonomous Systems, Industrial Robots, and Hardware
Why Robot Arms Still Cant Handle a Single Toothpick
Why can a two-million-dollar industrial robot arm lift a car engine but fail to pick up a single wooden toothpick from a table? In Episode 80 of The Robotics Podcast, Lucas and Luna drill into the physics of 'stick-slip' friction, the limits of proprioception in rigid serial-link manipulators, and why the toothpick problem reveals a fundamental gap in robot control theory. They walk through a 2025 experiment from MIT's Manipulation Lab where a KUKA LBR iiwa attempted the task 500 times with a success rate under 4 percent, and discuss what that means for automation in surgical…
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