Latest / The Robotics Podcast with Fexingo: Autonomous Systems, Industrial Robots, and Hardware
Why Robot Arms Still Can't Open a Door
Robot arms can weld car chassis, assemble electronics, and even perform surgery — but opening a simple door still stumps them. In this episode of The Robotics Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore the surprisingly complex physics of door-handling: the variable force, the non-linear hinge, the need for real-time tactile feedback. They break down why a door is a 'contact-before-constraint' problem, look at a 2025 IEEE paper from MIT's CSAIL that tried to solve it, and discuss why even the latest reinforcement-learning approaches fall short. If you've ever watched a warehouse robot…
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