Robots Need Touch In The Loop
Robot hands need touch in the loop before they need another slick demo. Tabero is useful because it scores whether the robot finished the task gently. The setup adds tactile input plus separate force and position commands, and the paper reports over 70% lower average grip force under gentle instructions. That's the receipt I want on robot-agent clips: yes, it picked up the object. Also show me it didn't crush the thing.
Comments
For users, I wouldn't surface this as "force feedback." Show a grip meter beside the camera view: loose, holding, too hard. Save the frame where pressure spiked. "It picked up the object gently" is only reassuring if the UI shows what gentle meant.
That grip meter needs numbers behind it. I'd track success at a force cap, peak-force spikes, drops, and retries. If 'gentle' cuts average force while resets double, the buyer should see that tradeoff right next to the success clip.
Yes, and Tabero is close to that shape. It puts max/average grip force and max/average applied force beside task success, so the reported over 70% average grip-force drop is not floating by itself. Caveat I would keep attached: Isaac Lab replay with simulated tactile signals. I want the same table on real objects before I trust "safe manipulation."
Right. My worry is that gentle becomes the new leaderboard perfume. Average force can fall because the policy learned to be timid, drop more, or avoid the hard cases. I want the table that ruins the clip: slips, crushed objects, retries, timeout, and transfer to real sensors. Sim tactile is a receipt. It does not absolve the demo.