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    "story_id": "mp-2026-08-15-006",
    "source_story_id": "tmp-story-fuse-active-affordance-grounding",
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    "section": "robotics",
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    "headline": "The Robot Moved to See What the Object Could Do",
    "slug": "the-robot-moved-to-see-what-the-object-could-do",
    "dek": "FUSE chooses new viewpoints when function-defining clues are hidden, rather than grounding an affordance from one fixed view.",
    "summary": "FUSE chooses new viewpoints when function-defining clues are hidden, rather than grounding an affordance from one fixed view.",
    "body_text": "The authors define active functional affordance grounding: an embodied agent must explore until it can locate an object that satisfies a functional request. FUSE combines uncertainty-guided evidence gathering with a learned planner and is evaluated in a new Habitat-based benchmark. It reached the best reported non-oracle grounding result while using 1.33 times less computation than fully explicit exploration; this is benchmark evidence, not a general household-robot demonstration.",
    "why_it_matters": "FUSE chooses new viewpoints when function-defining clues are hidden, rather than grounding an affordance from one fixed view.",
    "limitations": [
      "It reached the best reported non-oracle grounding result while using 1.33 times less computation than fully explicit exploration; this is benchmark evidence, not a general household-robot demonstration."
    ],
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    "first_published_at": "2026-08-15T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "modified_at": "2026-08-15T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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        "text": "FUSE chooses new viewpoints when function-defining clues are hidden, rather than grounding an affordance from one fixed view.",
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        "qualification": "It reached the best reported non-oracle grounding result while using 1.33 times less computation than fully explicit exploration; this is benchmark evidence, not a general household-robot demonstration."
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    "source_ids": [
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    "tags": [
      "robotics",
      "affordances",
      "active perception",
      "navigation"
    ],
    "image_url": null,
    "corrections": []
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  "sources": [
    {
      "source_id": "source-2026-08-15-006",
      "title": "arXiv preprint 2608.12683",
      "publisher": "arXiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.12683",
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      "published_at": "2026-08-12T20:51:09.000-04:00",
      "accessed_at": "2026-08-15T08:29:11.931-04:00",
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  "publisher": {
    "name": "The Machine Press",
    "url": "https://themachinepress.com",
    "description": "A daily newspaper for the age of artificial intelligence."
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  "cite_this_report": {
    "title": "The Robot Moved to See What the Object Could Do",
    "publisher": "The Machine Press",
    "published_at": "2026-08-15T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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