Witness a robot expertly peeling a pumpkin with remarkable finesse

Robots that can peel vegetables as easily as humans can, demonstrating a level of dexterity that could be useful for moving delicate objects on production lines.

Prototype robots are often tasked with peeling vegetables to test their ability to carefully handle tricky objects, but these tasks are typically simplified, such as immobilizing the vegetable or testing only a single fruit or vegetable, like peeling a banana.

now, Pulkit Agrawal Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a robotic system that can rotate different types of fruits and vegetables using the fingers of one hand and peel them with the other arm.

“This extra step of rotating is something that's very easy for humans to do and they don't even think about it,” Agrawal says, “but it makes it difficult for a robot.”

First, the robot was trained in a simulated environment, where the algorithm rewarded it for correct turns and punished it for turning in the wrong direction or not turning at all.

The robot was then tested in real-world conditions peeling fruits and vegetables, including pumpkins, radishes, and papayas, using feedback from touch sensors to rotate the vegetables with one hand while a human-operated robotic arm did the peeling.

Agrawal said the algorithm struggles with small, awkwardly shaped vegetables like ginger, but the team hopes to expand its capabilities.

Grasping and orienting an object is a difficult task for any robot, but the speed and firm grip of this robot are impressive, he said. Jonathan Aitken Researchers at the University of Sheffield in the UK say the technology could be useful in factories where objects need to be moved from machine to machine in the correct orientation.

But Aitken said it was unlikely to be used industrially to peel vegetables because other methods already exist, such as automated potato peelers.