Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

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Overview

This field studies how robots make and maintain useful contact with objects, where small errors in force, alignment, or friction can cause failure or damage. Approaches include tactile- and force-aware imitation learning and reinforcement learning, compliant and hybrid force-position control, contact-dynamics models, and planning methods that reason over contact modes. Recent work also brings these capabilities into vision-language-action policies and predictive world models, often using tactile feedback for fast corrections while vision guides the broader task. A central challenge is making policies safe and reliable across unseen objects, sensors, and real-world contact conditions, since more sensing or higher simulation fidelity does not consistently improve every task.

Latest papers

CardsList

420 papers78 papers in the last four weeks, down 4% on the four weeks before. 0.5% of all new papers.

  1. From Reach to Insert: Tactile-Augmented Precision Assembly under Sub-Millimeter Tolerances

    May 6, 2026Xinpan Meng, Siyao Huang, JingPu Yang +6RL for RoboticsContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    State Key Laboratory of Multimodal Artificial Intelligence Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

  2. RLDX-1 Technical Report

    May 5, 2026Dongyoung Kim, Huiwon Jang, Myungkyu Koo +65Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

  3. CoRAL: Contact-Rich Adaptive LLM-based Control for Robotic Manipulation

    May 4, 2026Berk Çiçek, Mert K. Er, Ozgur S. OguzLanguage Model-Based ControlLarge Language Model-Based Robot Planning

    LiRA Lab, Department of Computer Engineering, Bilkent University, Ankara, Türkiye

  4. Learning Tactile-Aware Quadrupedal Loco-Manipulation Policies

    Apr 29, 2026Pokuang Zhou, Yuhao Zhou, Quan Khanh Luu +7Legged RoboticsRL for Robotics

    Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA. · Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy. · Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.

  5. Global Sampling-Based Trajectory Optimization for Contact-Rich Manipulation via KernelSOS

    Apr 29, 2026Zhongqi Wei, Frederike DümbgenTrajectory OptimizationLong-Horizon Robotic Manipulation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA · Inria, Département d’informatique de l’ENS, CNRS, PSL Research University, Paris, France

  6. Move-Then-Operate: Behavioral Phasing for Human-Like Robotic Manipulation

    Apr 26, 2026Haoming Xu, Lei Lei, Jie Gu +3Robot Skill LearningContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hangzhou, China. · Rightly Robotics, Hangzhou, China. · Shanghai Innovation Institute, Shanghai, China. +2

  7. Tube Diffusion Policy: Reactive Visual-Tactile Policy Learning for Contact-rich Manipulation

    Apr 26, 2026Teng Xue, Alberto Rigo, Bingjian Huang +4Robot Policy LearningContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Meta Reality Labs Research · Idiap Research Institute · École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) +2

  8. Visual-Tactile Peg-in-Hole Assembly Learning from Peg-out-of-Hole Disassembly

    Apr 22, 2026Yongqiang Zhao, Xuyang Zhang, Zhuo Chen +3RL for RoboticsContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Department of Engineering, King’s College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom · Department of Informatics, King’s College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom

  9. Learning Hybrid-Control Policies for High-Precision In-Contact Manipulation Under Uncertainty

    Apr 21, 2026Hunter L. Brown, Geoffrey Hollinger, Stefan LeeRobotic ControlContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR

  10. DART: Learning-Enhanced Model Predictive Control for Dual-Arm Non-Prehensile Manipulation

    Apr 20, 2026Autrio Das, Shreya Bollimuntha, Madala Venkata Renu Jeevesh +5Non-Prehensile Robotic ManipulationBimanual Robotic Manipulation

  11. Novel Algorithms for Smoothly Differentiable and Efficiently Vectorizable Contact Manifold Construction

    Apr 19, 2026Onur Beker, Andreas René Geist, Anselm Paulus +1Signed Distance FunctionsContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    University of Tübingen

  12. FLASH: Fast Learning via GPU-Accelerated Simulation for High-Fidelity Deformable Manipulation in Minutes

    Apr 19, 2026Siyuan Luo, Bingyang Zhou, Chong Zhang +9Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationRobotics Simulation

    NUS Human-Centered Robotic Lab · ETH · ShanghaiTech University +2

  13. 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

  14. Learning Versatile Humanoid Manipulation with Touch Dreaming

    Apr 14, 2026Yaru Niu, Zhenlong Fang, Binghong Chen +8Humanoid Loco-ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Carnegie Mellon University · Bosch Center for AI · UT Arlington

  15. Frequency-aware decomposition learning for sensorless wrench estimation in vibration-rich robotic contact

    Apr 14, 2026Hyeonbeen Lee, Min-Jae Jung, Tae-Kyeong Yeu +4Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationFrequency-Domain Feature Learning

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kyung Hee University, South Korea

  16. OmniUMI: Towards Physically Grounded Robot Learning via Human-Aligned Multimodal Interaction

    Apr 12, 2026Shaqi Luo, Yuanyuan Li, Youhao Hu +7Robot LearningContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence · MAIS & NLPR, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences · School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences +3

  17. TAMEn: Tactile-Aware Manipulation Engine for Closed-Loop Data Collection in Contact-Rich Tasks

    Apr 8, 2026Longyan Wu, Jieji Ren, Chenghang Jiang +6Robotic Data CollectionContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Fudan University · Shanghai Innovation Institute · OpenDriveLab at The University of Hong Kong +2

  18. Learning-Based Strategy for Composite Robot Assembly Skill Adaptation

    Apr 8, 2026Khalil Abuibaid, Aleksandr Sidorenko, Achim Wagner +1Robot Skill LearningRobotic Assembly

    Chair of Machine Tools and Control System, RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany · Innovative Factory Systems, German Institute of Artificial Intelligence, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany · Chair of Machine Tools and Control Systems, RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany

  19. Learning-Guided Force-Feedback Model Predictive Control with Obstacle Avoidance for Robotic Deburring

    Apr 7, 2026Krzysztof Wojciechowski, Ege Gursoy, Arthur Haffemayer +4Force-Controlled Robotic ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    LAAS-CNRS, Universite de Toulouse, CNRS, Toulouse, France · Inria, AUCTUS team, Talence, France · Image and Pervasive Access Laboratory (IPAL), CNRS-UMI, 2955, Singapore +1

  20. You're Pushing My Buttons: Instrumented Learning of Gentle Button Presses

    Apr 7, 2026Raman Talwar, Remko Proesmans, Thomas Lips +2Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationImitation Learning

    AI and Robotics Lab (IDLab-AIRO), Ghent University—imec, Ghent, Belgium

  21. Simulation-Driven Evolutionary Motion Parameterization for Contact-Rich Granular Scooping with a Soft Conical Robotic Hand

    Apr 7, 2026Yongliang Wang, Cristian C. Beltran-Hernandez, Tomoya Takahashi +1Robotic ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    OMRON SINIC X Corporation, Tokyo, Japan. · Department of Artificial Intelligence, Bernoulli Institute, Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

  22. MorphoGuard: A Morphology-Based Whole-Body Interactive Motion Controller

    Apr 2, 2026Chenjin Wang, Zheng Yan, Yanmin Zhou +2Robotic ControlWhole-Body Robotic Manipulation

    Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems Shanghai 201210, China · College of Electronics and Information Engineering (Tongji University) Shanghai 201210, China

  23. Learning When to See and When to Feel: Adaptive Vision-Torque Fusion for Contact-Aware Manipulation

    Apr 1, 2026Jiuzhou Lei, Chang Liu, Yu She +2Robotic ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Jiuzhou Lei, Chang Liu, and Minghui Zheng are with the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA. · Yu She is with the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA. · Xiao Liang is with the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.

  24. Functional Force-Aware Retargeting from Virtual Human Demos to Soft Robot Policies

    Apr 1, 2026Uksang Yoo, Mengjia Zhu, Evan Pezent +8Motion RetargetingRobot Imitation Learning

    The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University · Meta Reality Labs

  25. Planning for Change: Reinforcement Learning Combined with Bounded Extremum Seeking for Robotic Control under Distribution Shift

    Apr 1, 2026Shaifalee Saxena, Rafael Fierro, Alexander ScheinkerRobotic ControlReinforcement Learning

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA · Los Alamos National Lab, Los Alamos, NM 87547, USA

  26. HapCompass: A Rotational Haptic Device for Contact-Rich Robotic Teleoperation

    Mar 31, 2026Xiangshan Tan, Jingtian Ji, Tianchong Jiang +2Haptic Feedback for Robot TeleoperationHaptic Feedback

    Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC) · University of Chicago

  27. Robotic Dexterous Manipulation via Anisotropic Friction Modulation using Passive Rollers

    Mar 29, 2026Ethan Fisk, Taeyoon Lee, Shenli YuanRobotic ManipulationDexterous Manipulation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA · RAI Institute, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA

  28. Visualizing Impedance Control in Augmented Reality for Teleoperation: Design and User Evaluation

    Mar 26, 2026Gijs van den Brandt, Femke van Beek, Elena TortaBimanual Robotic ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

  29. A Minimum-Energy Control Approach for Redundant Mobile Manipulators in Physical Human-Robot Interaction Applications

    Mar 26, 2026Davide Tebaldi, Niccolò Paradisi, Fabio Pini +1Robotic ControlContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    The authors are with the “Enzo Ferrari” Department of Engineering, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, via Pietro Vivarelli 10, 41125 Modena, Italy · The author is with the Department of Engineering for Innovation Medicine, University of Verona

  30. VTAM: Video-Tactile-Action Models for Complex Physical Interaction Beyond VLAs

    Mar 24, 2026Haoran Yuan, Weigang Yi, Zhenyu Zhang +9Tactile World ModelsContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign · Stanford University · Shanghai Jiao Tong University