Advances in robotic precision are giving robots capabilities once thought impossible, like picking up a potato chip without breaking it, which MIT researchers achieved by building a robotic gripper with tactile sensing and proprioception sensors.

Swiss researchers developed a device that uses ultrasound wave-generated acoustic levitation to carry small, fragile objects without having to touch them at all. And Stanford University researchers have developed optical tweezers that use laser-focused light to manipulate microscopic objects as small as an atom.