Trying to Train a Robot to Disassemble Vapes
At Europe Embodied 2026 in Munich, we tried to train a Franka Panda arm to disassemble disposable vapes. The physical task was simple to describe. A vape sits in a printed holder. The robot has custom printed gripper fingers. The fingers pinch the back cap and pull upward, so the battery can be removed from the vape instead of going into shredded waste. The learned RL policy stayed in simulation. We did not deploy it on the real Franka during the hackathon. ...