Force-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

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Overview

Force-controlled robotic manipulation studies how robots use contact forces to perform tasks that require more than accurate positioning, such as inserting parts, handling fragile objects, wiping surfaces, or turning valves. Common approaches include impedance and admittance control, hybrid force-position control, and tactile or force-feedback policies; newer systems pair slower vision or language-guided planning with fast reflexes that correct contact in real time. Researchers also use demonstrations, reinforcement learning, and simulation to learn force-aware behavior, sometimes estimating forces from vision, motor currents, or other low-cost signals instead of dedicated sensors. A central challenge is making these methods reliable across objects, tasks, and real-world conditions while balancing force accuracy, safety, sensing cost, and the speed of learned policies.

Latest papers

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122 papers31 papers in the last four weeks, down 14% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. Control Architecture for Safe Grasping of Fragile Objects Using a Coarse Position-Controlled Gripper

    Sep 11, 2026Marko Pavlic, Moritz Geier, Timo Markert +1Robotic GraspingContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Machine Vision and Perception Group, Chair of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Real-time Systems, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany · Resense GmbH, Klingenberg, Germany · Semantic Information Systems Group, Osnabrück University, Osnabrück, Germany

  2. Autonomous Precision Milling of Biological Structures via Generic Anatomical Priors and Active Boundary Perception

    Sep 11, 2026Enduo Zhao, Xiaofeng Lin, Yifan Wang +4Active Vision for Robot ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan · School of Biomedical Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China · Center for Disease Biology and Integrative Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan +2

  3. Contact-Aware Incremental Model Predictive Control for an Underactuated Aerial Manipulator

    Sep 10, 2026Darwin Liu, Tamas Keviczky, Sihao SunNonlinear MPCForce-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

    Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Delft University of Technology

  4. Compact Visuotactile World Models for Lifting: Prediction, Reward Alignment, and Force Constraints

    Sep 9, 2026Qinzhen MaTactile World ModelsRobot Skill Learning

    Rice University

  5. M3-Tele: A Unified Multimodal Teleoperational Framework for Compliant Whole-Body Mobile Manipulation

    Sep 7, 2026Hengxiang Chen, Shenwen Deng, Yujian Ma +3Mobile ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Arbeit Gruppe Dexterous Robotics Lab, Shenzhen Technology University, China

  6. CR-VLA-Force: Learning Control-aware Compliance VLA Model for Robust Contact-rich Robotic Manipulation

    Sep 5, 2026Zhaohong Mai, Chao Wang, Chao Zeng +4Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationForce-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

    South China University of Technology · Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. · Ola Dimensions +1

  7. Temporal Tactile Encoding and Compliance for Intent-Aware Robot-to-Human Bimanual Handover

    Sep 4, 2026Pasquale Marra, Stefano Berti, Gabriele Mario Caddeo +1Human-Robot CollaborationTactile Sensing for Robotic Manipulation

    Humanoid Sensing and Perception, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy. · DIBRIS, Universit`a di Genova, Via All’Opera Pia, 13, Genoa, Italy.

  8. Real-Time Dynamics-Based Torque-Sampling MPPI for Compliant and Force Aware Manipulation

    Sep 2, 2026Euncheol Im, Taehyun Kim, Yonghwan Oh +2Robotic ControlModel Predictive Control

    The Center for Humanoid Research, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), 02792 Seoul, South Korea · The School of Electrical Engineering, Korea University, 02841 Seoul, South Korea

  9. Facet-0: A Robotic Foundation Model for Contact-Rich Precise Manipulation

    Sep 1, 2026Haoyuan Deng, Haichao Liu, Wenkai Guo +6Robot Skill LearningContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    1PINE Lab, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

  10. Relaxation-Aware Multimodal Sensing of Soft Gripper Driven by Structure-Perception-Learning

    Aug 27, 2026Yanzhe Wang, Hao Wu, Ziyi Zheng +1Robotic GraspingSoft Robotics

    Grasp Lab, School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University · Torch Kernel Co., Ltd.

  11. One-Shot Learning from Demonstration of Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation by Identifying Physical Interactions

    Aug 25, 2026A. H. G. Overbeek, H. van der Kooij, M. VluttersLearning from DemonstrationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

  12. Force/Torque-Based Kinematic Adaptation for Robotic Manipulation Tasks

    Aug 21, 2026Carl Glen HenshawRoboticsRobotic Control

    US Naval Research Laboratory · U.S. Naval Research Laboratory

  13. UniReflex: Plug-and-Play Force Control for Pretrained Generative Policies via Fast-Slow Reflex

    Aug 18, 2026Yan Huang, Shoujie Li, Ziwu Song +1Force-Controlled Robotic ManipulationRobot Policy Learning

    Tsinghua University Shenzhen International Graduate School · Nanyang Technological University · X Square Robot +1

  14. ReForce: Learning Force-aware Retargeting for Dexterous Manipulation

    Aug 16, 2026Yuhang Wu, Lingqi Zeng, Changwei Jing +2Motion RetargetingRobotic Manipulation

    UC San Diego

  15. ForceU-VLA: A Force-Aware Vision-Language-Action Model for Embodied Ultrasound Scanning

    Aug 15, 2026Xingzheng Wu, Cheng Zhang, Guihao Yan +3Robotic UltrasoundVision-Language-Action Models

    Faculty of Computer Science and Technology, Ocean University of China Qingdao, China · School of Information Science and Engineering, Shandong University Qingdao, China · Innovation School of Artificial Intelligence, Hefei University of Technology Hefei, China

  16. Vibration Suppression in Collaborative Flexible Payload Manipulation Using Passive Force Control

    Aug 14, 2026Alaa Abderrahim, Antonio Rosales, Ferdinando Milella +2Deformable Object ManipulationForce-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

    VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd, Oulu, Finland · RP Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany · UK Atomic Energy Authority, Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom +1

  17. Enabling Scalable Kinesthetic Teaching via Observer-based Hand-guiding with Active Support

    Aug 11, 2026Anna Tuma, Giuseppe Monetti, Jochen J. Steil +1Force-Controlled Robotic ManipulationLearning from Demonstration

    Technology & Innovation Center, KUKA, Augsburg, Germany · Institute of Robotics and Process Control, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

  18. A Hierarchical Approach to Imitation Learning for Manipulation Tasks Requiring Time Varying Forces

    Aug 4, 2026Rishabh Shukla, Adithya Santhosh, Shaili Gandhi +2Bimanual Robotic ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Realization of Robotic Systems Lab (RROS) University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

  19. URF: A Unified Robot Control-Policy Framework for Stable Contact Aware Manipulation

    Jul 23, 2026Jiyou Shin, Youngjin Seo, Jaeseog Won +5Robotic ControlContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    The authors are with the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 2066, South Korea · The authors are with the Faculty of Intelligent Robotics, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 2066, South Korea

  20. One-Shot Multimodal Learning from Demonstration with Force-Constrained Elastic Maps

    Jul 10, 2026Brendan Hertel, Jonathan Spanos, Navya Garg +1Robot Skill LearningRobotic Manipulation

    Persistent Autonomy and Robot Learning (PeARL) Lab, University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA 01854, USA.

  21. Closing the Reality Gap: Zero-Shot Sim-to-Real Deployment for Dexterous Force-Based Grasping and Manipulation

    Jul 6, 2026Zhe Zhao, Zhibin Li, Yilin Ou +1Robotic GraspingDexterous Manipulation

    State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China · University College London, United Kingdom

  22. CoorGrasp: Coordinated Contact Control for Adaptive Dexterous Grasping Under Uncertainty

    Jul 3, 2026Mingrui Yu, Yongpeng Jiang, Yongyi Jia +2Robotic GraspingContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

  23. ForceBand: Learning Forceful Manipulation with sEMG

    Jun 24, 2026Botao He, Zhi Wang, Linna Kuang +8Robot Skill LearningContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Amazon FAR · University of Maryland · Johns Hopkins University

  24. Transferring Contact, Not Just Motion: Compliant Grasping Across Dexterous Hands

    Jun 14, 2026Soofiyan Atar, Yao-Ting Huang, Michael YipRobotic GraspingDexterous Manipulation

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of California San Diego, United States

  25. Interaction Dynamics for Dexterous Manipulation

    Jun 12, 2026Yongyan CaoDexterous ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Y. Cao is with Voryx Robotic LLC, San Jose, CA 95136, USA

  26. WT-UMI: Tactile-based Whole-Body Manipulation via Force-Supervised Contact-Aware Planning

    Jun 11, 2026Jaehwi Jang, Zhaoyuan Gu, Alfred Cueva +15Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationWhole-Body Robotic Manipulation

    The Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Institute of Technology

  27. IMPACT: Learning Internal-Model Predictive Control for Forceful Robotic Manipulation

    Jun 9, 2026Jiawei Gao, Chaoqi Liu, Peilin Wu +2Robotic ControlContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Harvard University · Stanford University

  28. FAWAM: Force-Aware World Action Models for Closed-Loop Contact-Rich Manipulation

    Jun 7, 2026Haotian He, Zeyu Yan, Qipeng Liu +2Robotic ControlWorld Models for Robotics

    School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University · School of Artificial Intelligence, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

  29. Tabero: Learning Gentle Manipulation with Closed-Loop Force Feedback from Vision, Touch, and Language

    May 27, 2026Qiwei Wu, Rui Zhang, Xin Xiang +4Language-Conditioned Robot ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    Nvidia, Beijing, China · Hong Kong University of Sci

  30. TactileReflex: Noise-Statistics-Driven Vision-Tactile Reflex Control for Force-Sensitive Manipulation

    May 22, 2026Ziyan Feng, Yulong Fu, Zheng Li +6Robotic ControlVision-Based Tactile Sensing

    Thrust of Robotics and Autonomous Systems, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, China. · School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.