Pulkit Agrawal, along with his colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have developed a robot that can skillfully peel a squash with human-like dexterity. The system consists of one arm that can rotate different types of fruit and vegetable using its fingers, while a second just peels.
Training the robot involved a simulated environment where it received an algorithmic reward for a proper rotation and a punishment if it rotated the wrong way or not at all. The next phase included real-world conditions by tasking it with peeling fruits and vegetables. One hand rotated the produce, using feedback from touch sensors, while a human-controlled robot arm did the peeling.
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These additional steps of doing rotation are something which is very straightforward to humans, we don’t even think about it. But for a robot, this becomes challenging,” said Pulkit Agrawal, assistant professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at MIT.
[Source]
