Tactile VLA Avocado Sorting: Do Continuous Features Beat Labels?
Should a vision-language-action robot receive tactile measurements as continuous features or as discrete labels? This episode explains the architectural choices behind that question and the evidence needed to interpret an avocado-sorting comparison. The discussion covers three approaches: semantic directives that guide a manipulation policy, tactile representations integrated into action generation, and numerical physical-property estimates used for interpretation. Verified examples include Octopi's real-robot avocado reasoning and TAP-VLA's tactile annotations for contact-rich manipulation…
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