Adaptive Control

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Overview

Adaptive control studies how controllers can estimate changing system dynamics or disturbances and adjust actions during operation, rather than relying on a fixed model. Common approaches include recursive least squares and disturbance observers, neural or Gaussian-process residual models, gain scheduling, and reinforcement-learning or meta-learned policies, often combined with model-predictive control, iterative learning, and Lyapunov or control-barrier safety filters. Work spans manipulators, quadrotors, autonomous vehicles, spacecraft, soft robots, and human-robot systems, tested in simulation and hardware under payload changes, friction, wind, actuator faults, contact, and distribution shifts. A central challenge is balancing fast, efficient adaptation against stability, constraint satisfaction, limited safe exploration, and robustness when learned models or policies are wrong.

Latest papers

CardsList

148 papers22 papers in the last four weeks, up 22% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Adaptive Artificial Time-Delay Control with Barrier Lyapunov Constraints for Euler-Lagrange Robots

    May 29, 2026Saksham Gupta, Rishabh Dev Yadav, Sarthak Mishra +5Robotic ControlFeedback Control

    Robotics Research Center, International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad, India · Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, UK · Autonomous Systems and Automatic Control in School of Engineering, Newcastle University, UK +1

  2. Learning and Adaptation in Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing Bead Geometry Control

    May 27, 2026Chen-Lung Lu, John WenAdditive ManufacturingAdaptive Control

    Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY

  3. Safety-Critical Adaptive Impedance Control via Nonsmooth Control Barrier Functions under State and Input Constraints

    May 27, 2026Faisal Lawan, Xiaoran Han, Joaquin Carrasco +2Control Barrier FunctionsRobust Control

    Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom

  4. Balancing Accuracy and Efficiency: Adaptive Dynamics Orchestration for Model Predictive Control

    May 22, 2026Francesco Cancelliere, Aniket Datar, Giovanni Muscato +1Off-Road Robot NavigationAdaptive Model Routing

    Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering (DIEEI), University of Catania, Italy · Department of Computer Science, George Mason University, USA

  5. Active Sensing Subserves Task-Level Control

    May 21, 2026Andrew Lamperski, Debojyoti Biswas, Eric S. Fortune +3Active SensingFeedback Control

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Minnesota · Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, Johns Hopkins University · 3Federated Department of Biological Sciences, New Jersey Institute of Technology +3

  6. Real-Time Auto-Optimization in Unknown Environments via Structure-Exploiting Dual Control for Exploration and Exploitation

    May 21, 2026Shiying Dong, Haoyang Yang, Qiwei Liu +1Second-Order OptimizationOptimal Control

    Department of Aeronautical and Aviation Engineering and Research Centre for Low Altitude Economy (RCLAE), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

  7. Zero-shot adaptation to order book dynamics

    May 20, 2026Arip AsadulaevSequential Decision MakingStochastic Optimal Control

  8. SPIKE: An Adaptive Dual Controller Framework for Cost-Efficient Long-Horizon Game Agents

    May 18, 2026Wencan Jiang, Jiangning Zhang, Jianbiao Mei +6Game-Playing AgentsFeedback Control

    1Zhejiang University · 2National University of Singapore · 3Nanyang Technological University

  9. Learning-Based Adaptive Control for Surgical Robotic Exposure Task on Deformable Tissues

    May 18, 2026Jiayi Liu, Kaiqi Wei, Yiwei Wang +2Deformable Object ManipulationVision-Based Robot Control

    Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

  10. Adaptive Outer-Loop Control of Quadrotors via Reinforcement Learning

    May 15, 2026Vishnu Saj, Sushil Vemuri, Dileep Kalathil +1RL ControlSim-to-Real Transfer

    Texas A&M University College Station, TX, USA

  11. ADAPT: A Self-Calibrating Proactive Autoscaler for Container Orchestration

    May 15, 2026Himanshu Singh BaghelAdaptive Control

    Department of Computer Engineering [J.C. Bose University of Science and Technology] Faridabad, India

  12. ASACK : Adaptive Safe Active Continual Koopman Learning for Uncertain Systems with Contractive Guarantees

    May 10, 2026Chandan Kumar Sah, Rajpal Singh, Jishnu KeshavanKoopman Operator LearningRobust Control

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, Karnataka 560012, India

  13. Model-Reference Adaptive Flight Control of a 95-mg Insect-Scale Flapping-Wing Aerial Robot

    May 8, 2026Francisco M. F. R. Gonçalves, Conor K. Trygstad, Néstor O. Pérez-ArancibiaRobot Trajectory TrackingAerial Robotics

    School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Washington State University (WSU), Pullman, WA 99164-2920, USA

  14. AirBender: Adaptive Transportation of Bendable Objects Using Dual UAVs

    May 7, 2026Jiawei Xu, Longsen Gao, Rafael Fierro +1Robot Trajectory TrackingAerial Robotics

    Autonomous and Intelligent Robotics Laboratory (AIRLab), Lehigh University, PA, 18015, USA · Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA

  15. Learned Lyapunov Shielding for Adaptive Control

    May 7, 2026Giansalvo Cirrincione, Adriano FagioliniLyapunov-Based ControlSafe RL

    Laboratoire LTI, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France. · MIRPALab, Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy.

  16. Temporal Attention for Adaptive Control of Euler-Lagrange Systems with Unobservable Memory

    May 7, 2026Giansalvo Cirrincione, Adriano FagioliniRL ControlRobot Trajectory Tracking

    Laboratoire LTI, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, France · MIRPALab, Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy

  17. Modular Lie Algebraic PDE Control of Multibody Flexible Manipulators

    May 6, 2026Sadeq Yaqubi, Jouni MattilaRobotic ControlAdaptive Control

    Department of Automation Technology and Mechanical Engineering, Tampere University, Korkeakoulunkatu 6, 33720 Tampere, Finland

  18. Bio-plausible Neuromorphic Disturbance Observer Based on Emulation Theory: Extended Version

    May 5, 2026Hongfu Xu, Xiaoyu Guo, Shengbo Wang +1Feedback ControlAdaptive Control

    School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China · Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong · Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong +1

  19. Robust Adaptive Predictive Control for Hook-Based Aerial Transportation Between Moving Platforms

    May 4, 2026Péter Antal, Andrea Carron, Melanie Zeilinger +2Robust ControlModel Predictive Control

    Systems and Control Lab, HUN-REN Institute for Computer Science and Control, Budapest, Hungary · Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland · Control Systems Group of the Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands

  20. VOFA: Visual Object Goal Pushing with Force-Adaptive Control for Humanoids

    May 2, 2026Zichao Hu, Zifan Xu, Dongsik Chang +6Humanoid Loco-ManipulationWhole-Body Control

    Department of Computer Science, The University of Texas at Austin · Amazon Inc. · Sony AI

  21. MindMelody: A Closed-Loop EEG-Driven System for Personalized Music Intervention

    May 2, 2026Yimeng Zhang, Yueru Sun, Haoyu Gu +1Controllable Music GenerationMusic Generation

    South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China

  22. Hierarchical adaptive control for real-time dynamic inference at the edge

    Apr 29, 2026Francesco Daghero, Mahyar Tourchi Moghaddam, Mikkel Baun KjærgaardAdaptive InferenceDistribution Shift

    MMMI Software Engineering University of Southern Denmark Odense, Denmark

  23. Interoceptive machine framework: Toward interoception-inspired regulatory architectures in artificial intelligence

    Apr 27, 2026Diego Candia-RiveraEmbodied AIAdaptive Control

    NERV · Sorbonne Université, Paris Brain Institute (ICM), CNRS, INSERM, AP-HP, Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, Paris 75013, France

  24. Distance-Misaligned Training in Graph Transformers and Adaptive Graph-Aware Control

    Apr 24, 2026Qinhan Hou, Jing TangGraph Attention NetworksStochastic Block Model

    University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland

  25. Rate-Optimal Regret for the Safe Learning-based Control of the Constrained Linear Quadratic Regulator

    Apr 24, 2026Spencer Hutchinson, Nanfei Jiang, Mahnoosh AlizadehStochastic Linear Dynamical SystemsStochastic Optimal Control

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California Santa Barbara

  26. AeroBridge-TTA: Test-Time Adaptive Language-Conditioned Control for UAVs

    Apr 21, 2026Lingxue LyuRobotic ControlAerial Robotics

    University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

  27. Neural Network-Based Adaptive Event-Triggered Control for Dual-Arm Unmanned Aerial Manipulator Systems

    Apr 18, 2026Yang Wang, Hai Yu, Wei He +3Robot Trajectory TrackingAerial Robotics

    Institute of Robotics and Automatic Information System, College of Artificial Intelligence, and Tianjin Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China. · Institute of Intelligence Technology and Robotic Systems, Shenzhen Research Institute of Nankai University, Shenzhen 518083, China.

  28. Refinement of Accelerated Demonstrations via Incremental Iterative Reference Learning Control for Fast Contact-Rich Imitation Learning

    Apr 18, 2026Koki Yamane, Cristian C. Beltran-Hernandez, Steven Oh +2Robot Trajectory TrackingContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    OMRON SINIC X Corporation, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan · Waseda University, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 169-8050, Japan · University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8573, Japan

  29. Trajectory Planning for Safe Dual Control with Active Exploration

    Apr 16, 2026Kaleb Ben Naveed, Manveer Singh, Devansh R. Agrawal +1Safe Motion PlanningAdaptive Control

    Department of Robotics, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109 USA. · Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109 USA.

  30. A Dynamic-Growing Fuzzy-Neuro Controller, Application to a 3PSP Parallel Robot

    Apr 15, 2026Mohsen Jalaeian-Farimani, Mohammad-R Akbarzadeh-T, Alireza Akbarzadeh +1Robotic ControlAdaptive Control

    Center of Excellence on Soft Computing and Intelligent Information processing, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran