This dextrous robot can teach itself to spin a tube of coffee beans

A robotic arm that can dextrously manipulate objects has been developed by a team at the University of Washington in what is being hailed as a major breakthrough. The University of Washington team's hand can "not only perform dexterous manipulation but also learn from its own experience", the team explains. As the hand attempted the task it became progressively more capable of spinning the tube, using machine learning algorithms to teach itself how to more adeptly handle the object, which the team compared to someone "going home, doing your homework and coming back to school a little more intelligent". "There are a lot of chaotic things going on and collisions happening when you touch an object with different fingers, which is difficult for control algorithms to deal with," said co-author Sergey Levine. Other teams have developed similar projects; London based Shadow-Robot developed a "Dexterous Hand", which it said "provides unique capabilities for problems that require the closest approximation of the human hand currently possible".