A robot that peels vegetables in the same way that people do demonstrates a level of dexterity that could help move delicate objects along a manufacturing line. Prototype robots are often tasked with peeling vegetables to test their ability to carefully handle awkward objects. But these challenges are usually simplified, such as the vegetable being fixed in place, or only testing single fruits or vegetables, like peeling a banana. How this moment for AI will change society forever (and how it won't) Now, Pulkit Agrawal at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues have developed a robotic system that can rotate different types of fruit and vegetable using its fingers on one hand, while the other arm is made to peel. "These additional steps of doing rotation are something which is very straightforward to humans, we don't even think about it," says Agrawal. "But for a robot, this becomes challenging." First, the robot was taught in a simulated environment, receiving an algorithmic reward for a proper rotation and a punishment if it rotated the wrong way or not at all.

In tests, the robot was able to successfully peel a banana 57% of the time. The whole process takes less than 3 minutes. A machine learning system developed by researchers at Japan's University of Tokyo can train a robot to peel a banana without crushing it. The robot was trained on about 13 hours of data in which a human demonstrator peeled hundreds of bananas. The machine learning model maps out a trajectory that involves copying the human when it comes to broad movements not likely to damage the fruit.

A robot trained by machine learning that imitates a human demonstrator can successfully peel a banana without smashing it to smithereens. Handling soft fruit is a challenge for robots, which often lack the dexterity and nuanced touch to process items without destroying them. The uneven shape of fruit – which can vary significantly even with the same type of fruit – can also flummox the computer-vision algorithms that often act as the brains of such robots. Heecheol Kim at the University of Tokyo and his colleagues have developed a machine-learning system that powers a robot, which has two arms and hands that grasp between two "fingers". First, a human operating the robot peeled hundreds of bananas, creating 811 minutes of demonstration data to train the robot to do it by itself.