Latest / The Robotics Podcast with Fexingo: Autonomous Systems, Industrial Robots, and Hardware
Why Robot Arms Still Cant Pick Up a Single Grain of Rice
Episode 64 of The Robotics Podcast digs into the tactile nightmare that is a single grain of rice. Lucas and Luna explore why even the most advanced robotic grippers fail on small, irregular, and fragile objects. They break down the physics of adhesion and friction, the state of tactile sensors, and a surprising 2025 paper from MIT's CSAIL that achieved a 73 percent success rate with a custom tweezer-gripper. Along the way, they discuss real-world implications for food processing, pharmaceutical sorting, and electronics assembly where tiny objects matter. The episode challenges the…
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