If they twist the object in each axis, they should be able to get the center of mass and the inertia tensor. You need that to throw something accurately. A ball and a stick with the same mass have very different moments of inertia. Something with liquid inside has a non-constant inertia tensor. You can get a lot of useful info that way.
Info that's useful in package handling.<p>If you lack that info, you have to handle everything very slowly, or clamp with great force, because you can't work with the dynamics of the object. This is one reason robot picking is so sluggish.