When babies learn to grasp things, they combine two systems, vision and motor skills. These two mechanisms, coupled with lots of trial and error, is how we can pick up pencil differently than a stapler, and now robots are starting to learn the same way.

Google is teaching its robots a simple task, picking up objects in one bin and placing them in another. They're not the first robot to pick something up, but these robots are actually learning new ways to pick up objects of different shapes, sizes, and characteristics based on constant feedback. For instance, they've robot learned to pick up a soft object differently than a hard object.

Other projects, like Cornell's DeepGrasping paper, analyze an object once for the best place to grasp, attempt to pick it up, then try again if it failed. Google's approach continuously analyzes the object and the robot hand's relation to it, making it more adaptable, like a human.