Mana: Dexterous Manipulation of Articulated Tools
Teaching robots to manipulate tools with moving parts by treating it like animation
Robots can now manipulate articulated tools—things with hinges, joints, and moving parts—by using a strategy borrowed from computer animation. The system, called Mana, learns to grasp and move tools like scissors, pliers, and tongs with a single robot hand, requiring less than a minute of human input per tool and succeeding on real hardware without additional training.
Most robot hands today can handle rigid objects but struggle with tools that bend, rotate, or have moving joints—the very tools humans use daily. This work opens the door to robots performing practical manipulation tasks in homes, factories, and repair shops, where articulated tools are ubiquitous. The approach is also efficient: it generates its own training data automatically, meaning new tools can be added without expensive manual setup.