Why use chopsticks?
Cook individual small pieces, Deft control of small objects: adjust onions when I'm caramelizing them to get more even browning, More precision and nicer to pan surfaces. perfect for flipping bacon and other similarly thin and small strips of meat or veg (especially on non-stick pans), Where they really shine is if you're working with hot oil. If you need to flip individual things or move them around, chopsticks are great. tabletop grilling such as Korean BBQ. It is much easier or at least quicker to flip the individual pieces of meat (especially after you have cut them into bit size pieces) with chopsticks than using the cheap tongs. picking up thin items like noodles or asparagus is much easier. Also they are great for stirring in jars (like if your peanut butter has separated). no better tool for beating eggs, mainly for manipulating things in the pan. use them to beat eggs with and mix sauces in bowls since I sometimes get splashing from over vigorous mixing with a spoon. spatula for folding, The narrow ends are super useful for not spilling small things like blending spices. Long chopsticks avoid splashing/boiling hot liquids (water, oil when frying).
Different primitives for different foods:
What should the tips be? pointed (Japanese), blunt (Chinese), flat blades, have ridges or serated, have soft elastomer coating, what material? Silicone, Swiss army knife
Other variations:
Wood, steel/titanium, ...
Length: 30cm cooking chopsticks.
Training chopsticks
Issues:
Apply force feedback for master chopsticks in teleoperation.
Only move one stick, not two symmetrically, so one stick can be positioned accurately (typically under the item to be picked up), and then only the other stick moves.
Another paper from Sidd's group: Grasping with Chopsticks: Fine Grained Manipulation using Inexpensive Hardware by Imitation Learning
Soft robotic hand using chopsticks. Paper: Manipulation of chopsticks with a soft robotic hand.
Learning to Gently Flip a Box with Chopsticks
3D printed "auto" chopsticks with sensor.
Automatic chopsticks from parts.
Lego mindstorms: Chopstick feeding robot.
The systematic design and fabrication of a three-chopstick microgripper Jongkyu Park & Wonkyu Moon.
Object deformation and force feedback for virtual chopsticks Yoshifumi Kitamura, Ken'ichi Douko, Makoto Kitayama,Fumio Kishino.
Autonomous Foods Handling by Chopsticks for Meal Assistant Robot
A Biologically Inspired Soft Robotic Hand Using Chopsticks for
A Learning Control Algorithm with Experiments on a Chopsticks Robot, D. Vassileva, G. Boiadjiev 9th IFAC Symposium on Robot Control 2009 (SYROCO 2009)
Kitamura, Y., Higashi, T., Masaki, T., Kishino, F., Virtual Chopsticks: Object Manipulation using Multiple Exact Interactions; Proc. VR99, pp.198-203 (1999)
A. A. Ramadan, T. Takubo, Y. Mae, K. Oohara, T. Arai: "Development Process of a Chopstick-Like Hybrid Structure Two-Fingered Micromanipulator Hand for 3D Manipulation of Microscopic Objects", IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, Vol. 56, No. 4, pp. 1121-1135, Mar. 2009.