Differentiable Physics

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Overview

Differentiable physics studies how to compute gradients through simulations of systems such as rigid-body contact, deformable materials, fluids, and chemical processes. Common approaches differentiate numerical solvers with automatic differentiation, adjoints, or implicit differentiation, and combine FEM, MPM, or PDE solvers with learned models; smoothing is often used for contacts and discrete events. These gradients support inverse problems, where observations are used to infer physical parameters, as well as trajectory optimization and control in settings such as robot manipulation and fluid engineering. GPU acceleration is making larger simulations practical, but gradients can still be unreliable around contact and other discontinuities, and speed must be balanced against physical fidelity and numerical stability.

Latest papers

CardsList

66 papers14 papers in the last four weeks, up 100% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Differentiable Contact Dynamics for Legged Locomotion: Policy Learning and Contact-Implicit Trajectory Optimization

    Oct 26, 2026Gijeong Kim, Seungbin Oh, Dongyun Kang +1Differentiable PhysicsTrajectory Optimization

    The authors are with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 34141, South Korea.

  2. Torch-DPhys: A Torch-Native, MOOSE-Compatible Framework for Differentiable Physics Simulation and Hybrid Machine Learning Integration

    Oct 16, 2026Akzhol Almukhametov, Yang LiuDifferentiable PhysicsPhysics-Based Simulation

    Department of Nuclear Engineering, Texas A&M University

  3. CQDC-Warp: GPU-Accelerated Differentiable Quasi-Dynamic Simulation for Contact-Rich Manipulation

    Oct 15, 2026Yanchen Ding, Jiayi Chen, Jianfeng Xu +3Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationTrajectory Optimization

    Peking University · Galbot · Tsinghua University

  4. DiffGIPC: Differentiable Mixed-Coordinate Contact Dynamics on GPU

    Oct 13, 2026Kemeng Huang, Bowen Ren, Xinyu Lu +2Differentiable PhysicsInverse Problems

    The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China · TransGP, Hong Kong SAR, China · Carnegie Mellon University, USA

  5. TorchSpin: Differentiable Electron Paramagnetic Resonance Simulation in PyTorch

    Oct 12, 2026Alec H. FollmerMagnetic Resonance SpectroscopyDifferentiable Physics

    Department of Chemistry, University of California, Davis, Davis, California 95616, United States · Linac Coherent Light Source, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, California 94025, United States

  6. Observation-Referenced Tissue Deformation Forecasting with Tool-Driven and Residual Dynamics

    Oct 9, 2026Tom Olesch, Nan Xiao, Xiongye Xiao +2Deformable Object SimulationSurgical Robotics

    Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville · Department of Surgery, University of Tennessee Medical Center, Knoxville

  7. A Physics-Informed Collision Learning Framework for Collaborative Robot Motion Generation

    Oct 8, 2026Chen Cai, Steven LiuRobot Collision AvoidanceRobot Motion Generation

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Kaiserslautern Landau, Kaiserslautern, 67663, Germany

  8. NeuralBES: A Differentiable, Control-Aware Emulator for Scalable Building Energy Modeling

    Oct 7, 2026Ting-Yu Dai, Takuya Kurihana, Wing Yee Au +1Neural Surrogate ModelingDifferentiable Physics

    Fujitsu Research of America

  9. UWB Meets Crazyflow: Simulating Degraded Feedback at Scale for Aerial Robotics

    Oct 6, 2026Martin Schuck, Marcel P. Rath, Yufei Hua +3Aerial RoboticsRobotics Simulation

    Learning Systems and Robotics Lab, Technical University of Munich, Germany

  10. Physics-based Sphere Packing for Lagrangian Mesh Morphing

    Oct 6, 2026Jiong Lin, Hod Lipson3D Mesh Generation3D Mesh Deformation

    Columbia University

  11. ProCut: Probabilistic Cutting Topology for Autonomous Electrosurgical Tissue Dissection

    Oct 5, 2026Xiao Liang, Fei Liu, Florian Richter +2Differentiable PhysicsSurgical Robotics

  12. DexForge: High-Fidelity Physics-Informed Dexterous Retargeting

    Oct 5, 2026Meizhong Wang, Kun Cao, Ruiqi Ni +2Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationMotion Retargeting

    Tongji University · Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems · Purdue University +1

  13. An End-to-End Framework for Modelling Pneumatic Soft Robots Based on Differentiable Finite Element Methods

    Oct 3, 2026Shaohong Zhong, Yao Yao, Perla Maiolino +1Soft RoboticsRobot Dynamics Identification

    Oxford Robotics Institute, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, OX1 3PJ Oxford, U.K

  14. PowerSim: Differentiable Physics Simulation and Rendering with Power Diagrams

    Sep 29, 2026Trong-Tung Nguyen, Anand BhattadDifferentiable Rendering3D Scene Representation

    Johns Hopkins University

  15. On the Numerical Reliability of Differentiable Physics-Based Optimization for Robotic Material Manipulation

    Sep 28, 2026Xintong Yang, Minglun Wei, Yu-Kun Lai +1Robot Dynamics IdentificationMaterial Point Method

    School of Engineering, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom · School of Computer Science and Informatics, Cardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom · College of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Hohai University, China

  16. Differentiable Dynamics for Autonomous Micro-Mobility Navigation

    Sep 25, 2026Grace Cai, Joey Lee, Nithin Parepally +2Vehicle DynamicsDifferentiable Physics

    Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland at College Park, MD, U.S.A.

  17. Bundled Contact Gradients: Stabilizing Differentiable Simulation for Deployable Dynamic Tasks

    Sep 25, 2026Dyuman Aditya, Jin Cheng, Clemens Schwarke +4Robotics SimulationDifferentiable Physics

    University of Southern California, LA, USA. · ETH Zurich, Switzerland. · NVIDIA. +1

  18. CraftSPH: A composable framework for differentiable smoothed particle hydrodynamics implemented in PyTorch

    Sep 24, 2026Gen Matono, Shujiro Fujioka, Mayuko NishioComputational Fluid DynamicsDifferentiable Physics

    Graduate student, Graduate School of Science and Technology, University of Tsukuba · Graduate Student, Department of Civil Engineering, Kyushu University · Ph.D., Associate professor, Institute of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba

  19. Adapting Rigid-Body Dynamics Derivatives for Constraint Embedding Closed-Chain Models

    Sep 17, 2026Daniel J. Volpi, Patrick M. WensingMultibody DynamicsDifferentiable Physics

    Dept. of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, IN-46556, USA

  20. Benchmarking Optimizers to Solve Inverse Problems with Differentiable Physics Simulators

    Sep 12, 2026Xiang Chen, Huanhuan XiaDifferentiable OptimizationInverse Problems

    Zhongguancun Academy, Beijing, China · Zhongguancun Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing, China

  21. Ostrich: Taking Large Strides Through Stiff Contact in Differentiable Dynamics

    Sep 8, 2026Aleš Kučera, Karel ZimmermannTrajectory OptimizationContact-Rich Manipulation

    Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

  22. Differentiable Hybrid Modelling for Learning and Optimising Chemical Transport Processes from Experimental Data

    Sep 3, 2026Arthur Jessop, Mohammed Alsubeihi, Ben Moseley +1Differentiable PhysicsDifferentiable Optimization

    Department of Chemical Engineering, The University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom. · Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, South Kensington, SW7 2BX, United Kingdom. · I-X Centre for AI in Science, Imperial College London, South Kensington, SW7 2BX, United Kingdom.

  23. From Numerical Simulators of PDEs to Neural Emulators and Back

    Aug 25, 2026Felix KoehlerPDE Surrogate ModelingPDE Solving

    Technische Universität München TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology

  24. Differentiate the Solver, Not the Equation: Reverse-Sweep Adjoints for Block Implicit Simulation

    Aug 9, 2026Lei Shu, Ying Jiang, Kui Wu +3Automatic DifferentiationDifferentiable Programming

    Stanford University · University of California, Los Angeles · LightSpeed Studios, Tencent America +1

  25. SoRoMoX: Fast, Differentiable, and Parallelizable Soft Robot Models

    Aug 6, 2026Maximilian Stölzle, Solange Gribonval, Daniel Feliu-Talegon +9Differentiable PhysicsContinuum Robot Control

    Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands · Italian Institute of Technology, Genoa, Italy · Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA +1

  26. BendTwin: Robust Dense-to-Sparse Physical Reconstruction with Bending-Aware Differentiable Spring-Mass Models

    Aug 6, 2026Yixiong Jing, Qi Wang, Lin Chen +6Structural MechanicsSparse-View 3D Reconstruction

    University of Cambridge · Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences · Northwestern Polytechnical University +1

  27. PhysCoRe: Physics-Corrected Residual World Models for Material-Aware Deformable Dynamics

    Jul 22, 2026Haocheng Yin, Shuohan Tao, Yongsheng Chen +1World Models for RoboticsDeformable Object Manipulation

    Georgia Institute of Technology

  28. Wearing A Coat: Dual-Arm Robot-Assisted Dressing with Differentiable Clothing Simulation

    Jul 13, 2026Yiming Liu, Lijun Han, Hesheng WangContact-Rich Robotic ManipulationAssistive Robotics

    Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

  29. Microcosmos: Reimagining Artificial Life for the GPU Era

    Jul 3, 2026Mark Tensen, Ciaran Regan, Bert Wang-Chak Chan +3Artificial LifeDifferentiable Physics

    1Artificial Life Institute, Japan · 2Sakana AI, Japan · University of Tsukuba, Japan +2

  30. Mosaic: A Benchmark Suite for Differentiable Physics Solvers

    Jun 26, 2026Andrin Rehmann, Heiko Zimmermann, Dion HäfnerAutomatic DifferentiationPDE Solving

    Pasteur Labs, Brooklyn, NY, USA