Having worked extensively at several companies in the 1990s trying to bring optical measurement of objects into production environments, I assure you that a lot

Having worked extensively at several companies in the 1990s trying to bring optical measurement of objects into production environments, I assure you that a lot of that bumpiness turns out to be artifacts of the measurement process. As just one example, there's really no laser-based measuring device in the world, even today, that can rapidly measure a surface near (<1mm) the edge of an object. Something that is trivial to do with ruby-ball touch sensors...