A human clearing junk out of an attic can often guess the contents of a box simply by picking it up and giving it a shake, without the need to see what’s inside. Researchers from MIT, Amazon Robotics, and the University of British Columbia have taught robots to do something similar.They developed a technique that enables robots to use only internal sensors to learn about an object’s weight, softness, or contents by picking it up and gently shaking it. With their method, which does not require ex...