Robots have got pretty good at picking up objects. But give them something shiny or clear, and the poor droids will likely lose their grip. Not ideal if you want a kitchen robot that can slice you a ...

Kitchen robots are a popular vision of the future, but if a robot of today tries to grasp a kitchen staple such as a clear measuring cup or a shiny knife, it likely won't be able to. Transparent and ...

Although we've seen color-changing coatings before, they generally just switch between two solid colors. MIT scientists have developed a new system, however, that allows coated objects to take on ...

Who doesn't love shiny things? Well... robots for one. The same goes for transparent objects. At least, that's long been the case. Machine vision has stumbled when it comes to shiny or reflective ...

Imagine you’re in IKEA, looking for a plastic kitchen stool. You find one, but—darn—it’s turquoise, which just doesn’t match your home color scheme. No problem. You tell a salesperson, who pushes a ...

The research team led by Masakazu Ohara, graduate student of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Toyohashi University of Technology (student in the Leading Program doctoral program); ...

Picking up transparent objects is hard when you’re a robot. Many of the traditional cameras and sensors just can’t get a good enough view to tell the grasper where to go. The light from infrared ...