Latest / The Robotics Podcast with Fexingo: Autonomous Systems, Industrial Robots, and Hardware
Why Robot Arms Still Cant Thread a Needle
In Episode 108 of The Robotics Podcast, Lucas and Luna tackle one of the most deceptively difficult tasks for industrial robot arms: threading a needle. They break down the physics behind why even high-precision robots fail at this seemingly simple task, comparing it to the dexterity of a human hand guided by tactile feedback and stereo vision. The hosts discuss a 2025 paper from MIT's CSAIL lab that quantified the challenge in terms of force control and visual latency, and explore how emerging sensor technologies like GelSight and event-based cameras are beginning to close the gap. They…
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