From what I have seen, what some of the research gets wrong is focusing too much on actuators and less on the frame rigidity/dynamics. Even if it's possible to arrive at somewhat okay-ish position performance using vision based feedback, the control system can't really cope with dynamic issues (imagine an end effector on a thin, long piece of wood: even if you can move it around to a certain position based on vision feedback, once you change the load on it, the piece of wood bends, once you decrease the load it snaps back etc).
In theory you can compensate for this by detecting the movement/vibration and moving the cutter to compensate. You "only" need 100khz sensors, fast processing and super quick actuators. You can lower this a bit with lower depth of cut and slower feed rates.
Like I said in theory. In practice we don't really have the ability to sense that well. While drivers that are that quick exist, they are exotic, or have limited range of motion.
I do think taking into account the feedback from the load as well as the weight of each section of the arm itself, needs to be done. In addition, some aspects of vibration control also need to be incorporated. (I guess the right word is proprioception, as mentioned in another commentor).
Yeah, it definitely needs to be done- if not for other reasons then just to find out exact machine limits and have more data for the next design iteration.
