I watched a video a while back about a wheel truing machine, made in Denmark, I think. It took a loosely assembled wheel and it does all the things - all of them! - that a human would, in pretty much the same way. Turning the wheel to feel for high or low spots and adjusting, unwinding, squeezing spokes, etc. except I wasn't clear if maybe that it worked by feeling torque on the nipple rather than measuring spoke tension. The nipples were turned from the channel of the rim with a driver, not at the flats with a wrench. Which conceptually should work pretty well for a human too if he had such a tool. It was clear to me that the only thing limiting such a machine is how much time you gave it to work, and that if you gave it enough time, it could absolutely be better than anything a human could do.

I was sort of surprised by that. There are clear limits on the approach - how fast can you turn it and grab a spoke nipple without marring it? Knowing nothing before watching, I imagined it would take some different, faster approach, - like maybe clamping down wheel and hub very hard, and doing them all at once with a motor on each spoke to the same torque.