Solving The Challenges Of Robotic Pizza-Making - Liwaiwai

For a robot, working with a deformable object like dough is tricky because the shape of dough can change in many ways, which are difficult to represent with an equation. Plus, creating a new shape out of that dough requires multiple steps and the use of different tools. It is especially difficult for a robot to learn a manipulation task with a long sequence of steps -- where there are many possible choices -- since learning often occurs through trial and error. Researchers at MIT, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of California at San Diego, have come up with a better way. They created a framework for a robotic manipulation system that uses a two-stage learning process, which could enable a robot to perform complex dough-manipulation tasks over a long timeframe.