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. Computable Fairness: Boltzmann-Softmax Control for AI Resource Allocation

    Apr 12, 2026Ji-Won Park, Chae Un KimFair Resource AllocationMulti-Agent Resource Allocation

    Regional Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA; Department of Economics, University of Ulsan, Ulsan, 44610, Korea. · Department of Physics, UNIST, Ulsan, 44919, Korea.

  2. Formally Guaranteed Control Adaptation for ODD-Resilient Autonomous Systems

    Apr 8, 2026Gricel Vázquez, Calum Imrie, Sepeedeh Shahbeigi +5Adaptive ControlRobust Control

    Department of Computer Science, University of York, UK · Cyprus University of Technology, Limassol, Cyprus

  3. Support Sufficiency as Consequence-Sensitive Compression in Belief Arbitration

    Apr 6, 2026Mark WalshAdaptive ControlBounded Rationality

  4. Real-Time Projected Adaptive Control for Closed-Chain Co-Manipulative Continuum Robots

    Apr 5, 2026Rana Danesh, Farrokh Janabi-Sharifi, Farhad AghiliContinuum Robot ControlAdaptive Control

    Department of Mechanical, Industrial, and Mechatronics Engineering, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada · Department of Mechanical, Industrial, and Aerospace Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal, QC H3G 1M8, Canada

  5. MetaTune: Adjoint-based Meta-tuning via Robotic Differentiable Dynamics

    Mar 28, 2026Xiexin Peng, Bingheng Wang, Tao Zhang +2Robust ControlFeedback Control

    School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117583, Singapore · Wuhan Zhenyou Technology Co., Ltd., Wuhan 430205, China

  6. Stability-Preserving Online Adaptation of Neural Closed-loop Maps

    Mar 23, 2026Danilo Saccani, Luca Furieri, Giancarlo Ferrari-TrecateNeural Network ControlFeedback Control

    Institute of Mechanical Engineering, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. · Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

  7. Dynamic Control Barrier Function Regulation with Vision-Language Models for Safe, Adaptive, and Realtime Visual Navigation

    Mar 22, 2026Jeffrey Chen, Rohan ChandraSafe Robot NavigationControl Barrier Functions

    Authors are with the Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia.

  8. Agentic Physical-AI for Self-Aware RF Systems

    Mar 21, 2026Linuka Ratnayake, Danidu Dabare, Sanuja Rupasinghe +4Adaptive ControlMulti-Agent Control

    University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka · University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland · Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA

  9. Rapid Adaptation of Particle Dynamics for Generalized Deformable Object Mobile Manipulation

    Mar 18, 2026Bohan Wu, Roberto Martín-Martín, Li Fei-FeiDeformable Object ManipulationGeneralization in Robotic Manipulation

    the University of Texas at Austin, USA

  10. IRAM-Omega-Q: A Computational Framework for Uncertainty Regulation in Adaptive Agents

    Mar 16, 2026Veronique ZieglerAdaptive Control

    Independent Researcher

  11. Intelligent Control of Differential Drive Robots Subject to Unmodeled Dynamics with EKF-based State Estimation

    Mar 16, 2026Amos Alwala, Yuchen Hu, Gabriel da Silva Lima +1Robotic ControlRobot Trajectory Tracking

    With the Smart Systems, Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Faculty of Technology, University of Turku, 20520 Turku, Finland.

  12. Learn Structure, Adapt on the Fly: Multi-Scale Residual Learning and Online Adaptation for Aerial Manipulators

    Mar 12, 2026Samaksh Ujjawal, Naveen Sudheer Nair, Shivansh Pratap Singh +3Aerial RoboticsTest-Time Adaptation

    1Robotics Research Center, IIIT Hyderabad, India. · Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, UK. · 3Newcastle University, UK.

  13. WESPR: Wind-adaptive Energy-Efficient Safe Perception & Planning for Robust Flight with Quadrotors

    Mar 10, 2026Khuzema Habib, Pranav Deshakulkarni Manjunath, Kasra Torshizi +2Quadrotor ControlMotion Planning

    University of Maryland, College Park.

  14. Adaptive SINDy: Residual Force System Identification Based UAV Disturbance Rejection

    Mar 9, 2026Fawad Mehboob, Amir Atef Habel, Roohan Ahmed Khan +3Disturbance RejectionRobust Control

    Intelligent Space Robotics Laboratory, Center for Digital Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow, Russia.

  15. Physics-infused Learning for Aerial Manipulator in Winds and Near-Wall Environments

    Mar 8, 2026Yiming Zhang, Junyi GengAerial ManipulationRobust Control

    The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802

  16. Information-Theoretic Framework for Self-Adapting Model Predictive Controllers

    Mar 1, 2026Wael Hafez, Amir NazeriAdaptive MPCModel Predictive Control

    Semarx Research LLC, Alexandria, VA, USA

  17. Refining Almost-Safe Value Functions on the Fly

    Feb 26, 2026Sander Tonkens, Sosuke Kojima, Chenhao Liu +2Safety-Critical ControlControl Barrier Functions

    University of California, San Diego

  18. Learning Dynamic Rope Manipulation Using Task-Level Iterative Learning Control

    Feb 24, 2026Krishna Suresh, Chris AtkesonIterative Learning ControlDynamic Robotic Manipulation

    Carnegie Mellon University

  19. Learning to Tune Pure Pursuit in Autonomous Racing: Joint Lookahead and Steering-Gain Control with PPO

    Feb 20, 2026Mohamed Elgouhary, Amr S. El-WakeelAutonomous RacingAdaptive Control

    The authors are with the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA

  20. Quasi-Periodic Gaussian Process Predictive Iterative Learning Control

    Feb 20, 2026Unnati Nigam, Radhendushka Srivastava, Faezeh Marzbanrad +1Iterative Learning ControlRobotic Control

    IITB-Monash Research Academy, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India · Department of Mathematics, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India · Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Melbourne, Australia

  21. SIT-LMPC: Safe Information-Theoretic Learning Model Predictive Control for Iterative Tasks

    Feb 18, 2026Zirui Zang, Ahmad Amine, Nick-Marios T. Kokolakis +3Iterative Learning ControlModel Predictive Control

    University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL 32816, USA · Lyric, Italia 152 Catania Italy

  22. Spatially-Aware Adaptive Trajectory Optimization with Controller-Guided Feedback for Autonomous Racing

    Feb 17, 2026Alexander Wachter, Alexander Willert, Marc-Philip Ecker +1Trajectory OptimizationAutonomous Racing

    Automation & Control Institute (ACIN), TU Wien, Vienna, Austria · AIT, Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH, Vienna, Austria

  23. TARC: Time-Adaptive Robotic Control

    Oct 27, 2025Arnav Sukhija, Lenart Treven, Jin Cheng +3Robotic ControlRL Control

    ETH Zurich

  24. Learning On The Job: Zero-Shot Task Execution under Parametric Uncertainty via Trajectory-Parametrized Dual Control

    Oct 23, 2025Victor Vantilborgh, Hrishikesh Sathyanarayan, Guillaume Crevecoeur +2Robotic ControlOnline System Identification

    Department of Electromechanical, Systems and Metal Engineering, Ghent University, Belgium · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Yale University, USA

  25. All-Electric Heavy-Duty Robotic Manipulator: Surrogate-Enhanced Modeling and Adaptive Modular Control

    Aug 8, 2025Amir Hossein Barjini, Mohammad Bahari, Mahdi Hejrati +1Robotic ControlAdaptive Control

    Department of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Tampere University, 7320 Tampere, Finland

  26. Differentiable Physics-Informed Adaptive Koopman Control for Stable Flight under Unknown Disturbances

    Jun 10, 2025Ao Jin, Qiujin Liang, Tao Zhang +2Robot Trajectory TrackingRobust Control

    Research Center for Intelligent Robotics, School of Astronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China · Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100080, China

  27. Learning-based Adaptive Safety-Critical Control With Evolving Unsafe Regions

    Mar 19, 2025Songqiao Hu, Zidong Wang, Zeyi Liu +2Safety-Critical ControlControl Barrier Functions

    Department of Automation and the Institute for Embodied Intelligence and Robotics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China · Department of Computer Science, Brunel University London, UB8 3PH Uxbridge, U.K. · State Key Laboratory of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Systems, Beijing Engineering Research Center of Intelligent Systems and Technology, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

  28. Learning-Based Progressive Barrier Control for Robot Manipulators with Initial Errors Outside Prescribed Tracking Bounds

    Mar 18, 2025Hamed Rahimi Nohooji, Danial Zafaranchizadeh Moghaddam, Abolfazl Zaraki +1Robotic ControlRobot Trajectory Tracking

    Automation and Robotics Research Group, Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust, University of Luxembourg, 1855 Luxembourg, Luxembourg · School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science (SPECS), and Robotics Research Group of the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB, United Kingdom