How Humans Walk and Carry a Cup of Coffee Is a Physics Mystery

Ever wonder how you carry that hot cup of coffee without spilling it on yourself?  Well, the fact that you don’t spill the coffee is a bit of a physics mystery, according to researchers at Arizona State University’s School of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering.

The researchers are trying to figure out how robots could mimic the same movements and adjustments as humans do, while they would carry a hot beverage.  So, they are using a ball, rolling around in a cup, to mimic the hot beverage.  They’re trying to figure out how the task can be less difficult for machines…

“A systematic quantitative understanding of how humans interact dynamically with their environment will forever change how we engineer our world and may revolutionize the design of smart prosthetics and usher in a new age of manufacturing and automation,” says Brian Wallace, a doctoral student, and co-author of the research paper.

Do you think we’ll get to a point where robots could bring you a cup of hot coffee without spilling it?

What is one thing you wish you could have a robot do?