Does a rate-based "holds" criterion make a MuJoCo grasp verdict independent of solver settings?
research/robofab-slipcrit
Does a rate-based "holds" criterion make a MuJoCo grasp verdict independent of solver settings? No: the minimum holding force still varies 33x to 400x or more across contact settings, like a 1 degree tolerance (negative, stylised).
What it found
A follow-up to robofab-sliprate. Judging a bar held at one end by its extrapolated creep over a 3 s hold (under 2 mm) instead of a rotation tolerance does not help: across eight MuJoCo contact settings the minimum holding force varies by 33× to 400× or more, about as much as under a 1° tolerance. Only a loose 5° tolerance is stable, and only for bars up to 40 mm. Negative and preliminary: the settings, not the criterion, drive the verdict. Stylised, one engine, no physical grip.
A figure from its own output
Paper, code and results
More in Robot manufacturing loops
- Is any rate threshold settings-robust for a MuJoCo grasp "holds" verdict?Is any rate threshold settings-robust for a MuJoCo "holds" verdict? Spread falls with the allowed tip speed and is 1.6 only at a loose 20 mm/s (0.5 s, 10 mm); 242.7 to 400 at 2 mm/s or less (stylised, preliminary).
- Does the loose 20 mm/s “holds” threshold stay settings-robust at other friction and under lift?Does the loose 20 mm/s "holds" threshold stay settings-robust at other friction and under lift? It is the only threshold under 5x spread in all six conditions (1.6 to 4.5), every other is at least 20x (stylised, preliminary).
- Does a stiffer friction cone make the held-bar result in robofab-liftload threshold-free?Does a stiffer friction cone make the held-bar result threshold-free? Creep falls about as 1/
impratio(3.66 to 0.004 deg/s); fromimpratio10 the 1 and 5 degree forces agree within 26%, and MuJoCo needs 0.67 to 1.17 times the old torque bracket's lower bound (stylised). - How much clearance does a printed two-pin cover need to assemble, and how wasteful is worst-case stacking?How much clearance does a printed two-pin cover need to assemble, and how wasteful is worst-case stacking? At position sd 0.10 mm and size sd 0.05 mm, 99% yield needs 0.62 mm diametral clearance and a ±3σ worst-case stack asks for 2.0 mm (stylised, assumed process spreads).
- When does the textbook milling chatter chart mislead?Zero-order milling stability lobes against semi-discretisation and time-domain simulation for a one-mode tool: exact at slotting, but at 10% up-milling the limit is up to 3.3 times too high at some speeds, and in down-milling the zero-order chart predicts no chatter while the tool goes unstable below 0.9 mm; the best spindle speed raises removal rate 5 to 18 times.
- How far below a clairvoyant schedule is online pick dispatch in a robotic waste-sorting cell?Follow-up to infra-sortvalue: an exact dynamic-programming bound on the best possible pick schedule (agreeable deadlines make arrival order optimal) shows highest-value-first dispatch reaches 96.5% of the clairvoyant optimum at 6 items/m and 93.9% at 10, FIFO 94.7% and 89.6%, and that the largest headroom (about 10 to 11%) sits at faster belts and slower arms, not at the loads where pick order helped most. A rolling-horizon rule that re-solves the schedule with a 1 s look ahead recovers most of it: 99.7% of the optimum at 6 items/m and 98.0% in the hardest cells.
All 53 Robot manufacturing loops projects →
Other research topics
Proper scoring & elicitation28Effort & peer prediction9Verification games & slashing19Detection & tolerances14Markets as routers13Prediction-market design9Paying contributors8Decentralised training systems23Digital twins & sim-to-real164LLM chip design loops40Robot manufacturing loops53Ambient AI assistant46Self-replicating manufacturing34Simulation-first design64Engineered clothing45Task-specific AI accelerators40Algorithmic chip-design loops42Open-source purpose-built robots44The software-engineering loop43Adversarial human imitation41Open-source residential construction41Autonomous multi-angle capture34Sensing, imaging and 3D31Energy supply and dense energy storage39Robot societies among people31Agentic co-design of low-cost robots27Laundry-hanging robots25Machine learning on qualitative data23Robots on the building site27Civilizations & group psychology1History & human sciences1
Produced with AI assistance (Claude). Results are from the code in this repository and are simulated or stylised unless the abstract says otherwise; nothing here implies affiliation with or endorsement by any lab, researcher or company cited. MIT licensed.