Robotic touch remains unsolved with scarce training data, researchers push back on zero-shot hype
LerrelPinto · x · 2026-09-13
Robotics researcher Aviv Tamar reminds the field that robotic touch is far from solved and there is currently very little data to train on — leaving substantial interesting work ahead. Lerrel Pinto quote-shared the note, adding context: academics have been in "deep despair" over the past week as Astra, Fable, and Muse zero-shot robotics and world-model benchmarks. Pinto calls this an "uneasy pill to swallow" but exactly what step jumps in progress look like; Tamar's reminder counters the hype by pointing to tactile sensing as an unsolved, data-starved frontier.
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