The UMass Mobile Manipulator, or UMan pushes objects around on a table to see how they move. Once it identifies an object's moving parts, it begins to experiment with it, manipulating it to perform tasks. "You can imagine a baby playing with a toy and pulling the different parts and seeing what moves how," says lead author and graduate student Dov Katz, who did the work with Oliver Brock, a professor of computer science.

See the (very short!) vid:

http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/21027/?a=f