Manipulation Solved by Feeling: Vision Isn't as Important as You Think
This paper presents a breakthrough in robotic manipulation by showing that contact-based joint position signals can enable precise, zero-shot insertion tasks such as pegs, gears, and nuts without cameras or tactile sensors. The approach leverages joint drift to perform blind, fine-grained assembly tasks, marking a significant step toward general-purpose robotics.
This research challenges the conventional reliance on vision in robotic manipulation by demonstrating that contact-based joint position signals can enable precise, zero-shot insertion tasks such as pegs, gears, and nuts without cameras or tactile sensors.
Source: Pulkit Agrawal — X Robotics · Read original article ↗
Article text · Original source · English
Manipulation gets solved by feeling; vision isn't as important as you think! A leap in the last mm manipulation that holds back general-purpose robotics 👇
Every robot already carries contact sensors: its own joints. When a robot touches something, its joints drift slightly off their commands, and the encoders pick it up. Legged robots and humanoids already leverage this signal to walk blind - but is it enough for blind precise assembly? We find that it is! Our policies can insert pegs, mesh gears, and thread nuts using only the robot's joint positions - no camera, no tactile, and no object poses. And the peg policy works zero-shot in the real world! 🧵 w/ my amazing co-first author @younghyo_park, and advised by @kushalk_ and @pulkitology.View the quoted post on X
Source：Pulkit Agrawal · x.com