Bite Transfer

In robot-assisted feeding, the stage of the feeding cycle in which a robot arm moves food already on a utensil from a pickup location into the user's mouth. Bite transfer is distinct from bite acquisition (picking food up from a plate) and is the most physically intimate and safety-critical part of the interaction: the robot must adapt to head movement, mouth opening, and force tolerances, and it must recover gracefully if the user pulls away or coughs. Design considerations overlap with broader accessibility concerns around trust, predictability, pre-action signaling, and user override.