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    "story_id": "mp-2026-09-18-004",
    "source_story_id": "tmp-story-safeharness-obstacle-priority",
    "edition_id": "mp-2026-09-18-morning-0071",
    "edition_url": "https://themachinepress.com/edition/2026-09-18",
    "position": 4,
    "story_type": "dispatch",
    "section": "safety",
    "editorial_classification": "editorial",
    "headline": "The Agent Saw the Obstacle and Still Hit It",
    "slug": "the-agent-saw-the-obstacle-and-still-hit-it",
    "dek": "Two obstacle-aware harnesses raised collision avoidance to 87.5% without robot-specific training.",
    "summary": "Two obstacle-aware harnesses raised collision avoidance to 87.5% without robot-specific training.",
    "body_text": "Coding agents could mention a forbidden obstacle in their traces and still treat task completion as the only operational priority. SafeHarness splits the fix into route planning and contact execution: it grounds objects as boxes, proposes and verifies waypoint routes, replans infeasible paths, and chooses contact positions that respect the same constraint. The reported system reached 71.9% task success and 87.5% collision avoidance, 6.5 and 27.0 percentage points above the cited prior state of the art. The authors locate the failure in planning priority rather than in perception or prompt wording.",
    "why_it_matters": "Two obstacle-aware harnesses raised collision avoidance to 87.5% without robot-specific training.",
    "limitations": [
      "Coding agents could mention a forbidden obstacle in their traces and still treat task completion as the only operational priority."
    ],
    "importance": 9,
    "canonical_url": "https://themachinepress.com/story/mp-2026-09-18-004/the-agent-saw-the-obstacle-and-still-hit-it",
    "json_url": "https://themachinepress.com/story/mp-2026-09-18-004.json",
    "first_published_at": "2026-09-18T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "modified_at": "2026-09-18T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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        "text": "Two obstacle-aware harnesses raised collision avoidance to 87.5% without robot-specific training.",
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        "qualification": "Coding agents could mention a forbidden obstacle in their traces and still treat task completion as the only operational priority."
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    "source_ids": [
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    "tags": [
      "robot safety",
      "coding agents",
      "motion planning"
    ],
    "image_url": null,
    "corrections": []
  },
  "sources": [
    {
      "source_id": "source-2026-09-18-004",
      "title": "arXiv preprint 2609.20822",
      "publisher": "arXiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.20822",
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      "source_type": "primary_research",
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      "published_at": "2026-09-17T13:59:58.000-04:00",
      "accessed_at": "2026-09-18T08:26:40.599-04:00",
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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 Agent Saw the Obstacle and Still Hit It",
    "publisher": "The Machine Press",
    "published_at": "2026-09-18T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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