  Liquids and granular media are pervasive throughout human environments, yet
remain particularly challenging for robots to sense and manipulate precisely.
In this work, we present a systematic approach at integrating capacitive
sensing within robotic end effectors to enable robust sensing and precise
manipulation of liquids and granular media. We introduce the parallel-jaw
RoboCAP Gripper with embedded capacitive sensing arrays that enable a robot to
directly sense the materials and dynamics of liquids inside of diverse
containers, including some visually opaque. When coupled with model-based
control, we demonstrate that the proposed system enables a robotic manipulator
to achieve state-of-the-art precision pouring accuracy for a range of
substances with varying dynamics properties. Code, designs, and build details
are available on the project website.
