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    "story_id": "mp-2026-09-18-007",
    "source_story_id": "tmp-story-agile-wam-tactile-timescales",
    "edition_id": "mp-2026-09-18-morning-0071",
    "edition_url": "https://themachinepress.com/edition/2026-09-18",
    "position": 7,
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    "section": "robotics",
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    "headline": "Touch Needed a Faster Clock Than Vision",
    "slug": "touch-needed-a-faster-clock-than-vision",
    "dek": "Agile-WAM predicted next-frame touch and slower visual change, reaching 11.9-millisecond inference.",
    "summary": "Agile-WAM predicted next-frame touch and slower visual change, reaching 11.9-millisecond inference.",
    "body_text": "Adjacent camera frames often change gradually while tactile readings can jump at first contact. Agile-WAM encodes both streams into one latent space but supervises visual prediction at a longer offset and tactile prediction at the next frame, then generates future latents and action chunks together. Across nine simulated and five physical contact-rich tasks, the compact model beat the strongest reported baseline while keeping inference latency to 11.9 milliseconds. The five real-world experiments showed a 29.4% relative gain in overall success rate.",
    "why_it_matters": "Agile-WAM predicted next-frame touch and slower visual change, reaching 11.9-millisecond inference.",
    "limitations": [],
    "importance": 8,
    "canonical_url": "https://themachinepress.com/story/mp-2026-09-18-007/touch-needed-a-faster-clock-than-vision",
    "json_url": "https://themachinepress.com/story/mp-2026-09-18-007.json",
    "first_published_at": "2026-09-18T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "modified_at": "2026-09-18T09:00:00.000-04:00",
    "content_status": "new",
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    "carryover_reason": null,
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        "text": "Agile-WAM predicted next-frame touch and slower visual change, reaching 11.9-millisecond inference.",
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        "qualification": null
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    "source_ids": [
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    "tags": [
      "tactile control",
      "world models",
      "contact-rich manipulation"
    ],
    "image_url": null,
    "corrections": []
  },
  "sources": [
    {
      "source_id": "source-2026-09-18-007",
      "title": "arXiv preprint 2609.20761",
      "publisher": "arXiv",
      "url": "https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.20761",
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      "source_type": "primary_research",
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      "published_at": "2026-09-17T13:43:51.000-04:00",
      "accessed_at": "2026-09-18T08:26:40.599-04:00",
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  "corrections": [],
  "publisher": {
    "name": "The Machine Press",
    "url": "https://themachinepress.com",
    "description": "A daily newspaper for the age of artificial intelligence."
  },
  "cite_this_report": {
    "title": "Touch Needed a Faster Clock Than Vision",
    "publisher": "The Machine Press",
    "published_at": "2026-09-18T09:00:00.000-04:00",
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