Manipulation in Human Environments

Within factories around the world, robots perform heroic feats of manipulation on a daily basis. They lift massive objects, move with blurring speed, and repeat complex perfor-mances with unerring precision. Yet outside of these carefully controlled robot realms, even the most sophisticated robot would be unable to pour you a drink. The everyday manipula-tion tasks we take for granted would stump the greatest robot bodies and brains in existence today. Why are robots so glorious in the factory, yet so incompetent in the home? At the Robotics Science and Systems Workshop: Manipulation for Human Environments [1], we met with researchers from around the world to discuss the state-of-the-art, and look toward the future. Within this article, we present our perspective on this exciting area of robotics, as informed by the workshop and our own research