Can Robots Use Chopsticks?

April 26, 2007 11:09 AM

Can robots use chopsticks?

Over lunch, I wondered if we've yet programmed a robot to use chopsticks. Could this be an Iron Turing Test?

Use of chopsticks on any object are acceptable, images or movies are preferred. Bonus points for anthropomorphic robots captured in the act of "eating".

posted by qbxk to Technology (4 answers total)

This one [drawing] arose from rather a strange conversation I had with someone in physics class about robots using chopsticks. Since it was a robot it also had to simultaneously be murdering people. link
posted by iconomy at 11:19 AM on April 26, 2007 [2 favorites]

Googling "robot chopsticks" brought me to this scientific paper
posted by adamrice at 11:22 AM on April 26, 2007

Give a good reason to do this and someone will have a robotic arm feeding you rice in two months. In the meantime, forks are much simpler. Same reason most mobile robots use wheels instead of legs.
posted by IronLizard at 11:56 AM on April 26, 2007

It's possible, and I'm sure it's been used in demos, as long as you're talking about a simple 1 or 2-degree of freedom chopstick-like gripper. But if you're thinking of an actual 5-fingered humanoid robotic hand using chopstics, that would be a very difficult task to accomplish.

(Does anyone else find it funny that "Turning Test" in the link redirects to Turing Test?)
posted by Krrrlson at 12:01 PM on April 26, 2007