The UMass Mobile Manipulator, developed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is able to learn to use objects that it has never encountered before.

UMan uses a regular webcam to look down at a table from above. By analyzing differences between adjacent pixels, it guesses where an object’s edges might be found. Then it prods the object and, on the basis of how it moves, revises its estimate of the object’s shape (see video below). It continues shoving the object around, observing how its parts move in relation to each other.