Robot, dress thyself
It may have no need of clothing, but a robot that can slip on a T-shirt could go a long way toward building automatons that help humans with everyday tasks. Typically, robots are great at grasping solid, regular-shaped objects – something made of cloth, not so much. No more. Takamitsu Matsubara of the Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan built a robot that uses machine learning to figure out how to orient the floppy garment and put its arms through the correct holes (Advanced Robotics, doi.org/mfs). The ability could be used to build a robot…
