Robot arm learns to flip pancakes, can never know the joys of tasting one
![](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/8fTBBLd.3oaSqamy.v7Hug--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTU4Nw--/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/zn80FWqHHjCDar5Pskd3Hg--~B/aD0zNDM7dz01NjE7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/https://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/07/pancake-robot-arm-1.jpg)
We'd like to pretend to be all serious about the science behind teaching a robot arm to teach itself a complicated motion like pancake flipping. We'd drone on and on about how the combination of demonstrated motion, trial-and-error, and object motion tracking come together for some "Expectation-Maximization based Reinforcement Learning," but really we just can't stop giggling at all the pancake misses perpetrated by the robot on video, which can be found after the break.