Teaching robots to see and feel

More and more industrial tasks are being performed by robots, but human operators are still needed for the more complex manipulation actions, such as handling and processing food products. "If our aim is to automate some or all these tasks in the food industry, or in other areas, we have to equip the robots with new knowledge via learning. They have to learn the so-called soft skills first so that they will be able to execute operations at the same level as humans in the future," explained Ekrem Misimi, who is a SINTEF researcher developing robot learning technology as part of the iProcess project. In order to teach the robots these complex manipulation skills, a combination of visual and tactile learning is required. In other words, they must learn to see and feel simultaneously.