A Robot Can Finally Peel a Banana Without Destroying It

Manipulating soft fruit is something extremely difficult for robots, but thanks to the power of an A.I., a machine has finally learned how to do it… most of the time.

First, a human operating the robot peeled hundreds of bananas, creating 811 minutes of demonstration data to train the robot to do it by itself. The task was divided into nine stages, from grasping the banana to picking it up off the table with one hand, grabbing the tip in the other hand, peeling it, then moving the banana so the rest of the skin can be removed.

[New Scientist]