This Fingertip for Robots Uses Magnets to 'Feel' Things

Imagine, if you will, the home robot of the future. It picks clutter off the floor, sweeps, and does the dishes. And it has to do so perfectly: If the robot has an error rate of just 1 percent, it will drop one dish out of a hundred. In no time, your floor would be covered in shards and the robot would get stuck in a sad, vicious feedback loop, dropping dishes and sweeping them up and dropping more dishes, ad infinitum. To avoid this domestic nightmare, engineers will have to give robots a keen sense of touch.