AI-powered robot learned to make letters out of Play-Doh on its own

A robot has learned how to mould modelling clay into letters that it has never seen before. Creating complex shapes out of doughy materials is a skill that could be put to use in the future in the form of a dumpling-making robot chef. "Deformable objects are ubiquitous in our daily life," says Yunzhu Li at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Robots capable of gently handling such objects could one day cook, do housework or even help care for elderly people, he says.