true history of manipulation goes back for millions of years, including teleoperation, tool-wielding humans (and other animals), and even “naked” humans and other animals. When we draw examples from the
entire history of manipulation, we see a broad set of problems and techniques, and many interesting research opportunities. This talk addresses the dreary issue of how to define manipulation, interspersed
with some potentially less dreary examples of manipulation performance and research, including recent work on “extrinsic dexterity” (which you can find on YouTube).