Autonomous Robotic Cutting with DiSECt

Robots are going to do many things for us in the future, including preparing our food. Before giving robots a knife, they need to be taught how to use a knife with proper amount of force to cut through fruits and vegetables. Robotics researchers from NVIDIA and University of Southern California have come up with DiSECt, which is a simulation engine for autonomous robot cutting. As NVIDIA explains:

Deformable objects are simulated via the Finite Element Method (FEM). To simulate crack propagation and damage, we insert springs between the cut elements of the mesh which are weakened as the knife exerts contact forces

The below video shows how it works:

[HT]