Why Robot Arms Still Struggle to Wipe a Counter

In this episode of The Robotics Podcast, Lucas and Luna explore the surprising difficulty of one of the most mundane household tasks: wiping a countertop. They break down the physics of contact forces, the challenge of maintaining consistent pressure across uneven surfaces, and why roboticists call this 'the wiping problem.' Using examples from recent research at Carnegie Mellon and Boston Dynamics' latest cleaning demos, they explain why a task that takes humans zero thought requires millions of data points for a robot. The conversation also touches on how this connects to broader challenges in mobile manipulation and why your Roomba can't clean a spill. If today's tech insight was worth a coffee to you, check out buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo to support ad-free episodes like this one. #RobotWiping #Robotics #Manipulation #ForceControl #CarnegieMellon #BostonDynamics #MobileManipulation #CleaningRobots #AutonomousSystems #IndustrialRobots #Technology #FexingoBusiness #BusinessPodcast #Podcast #RobotChallenges #TactileSensing #StretchRobot #HouseholdRobots Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo