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. CoRMA: Contrastive RMA for Contact-Rich Meta-Adaptation

    May 21, 2026Wentian Wang, Chutong Wen, Hongxu Ma +6Robot Policy AdaptationRobot Skill Learning

    Synthoid AI · HKU

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. Delta6: A Low-Cost, 6-DOF Force-Sensing Flexible End-Effector

    Apr 7, 2026Yue Feng, Weicheng Huang, Chen Qiu +2RoboticsForce-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

    Robotics Research Center (RRC), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798. · WinGs Robotics LLC, NY, 10314 USA. · Maider Medical Industry Equipment Company, Ltd., Taizhou 317607, China. +1

  5. 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

  6. GraspSense: Physically Grounded Grasp and Grip Planning for a Dexterous Robotic Hand via Language-Guided Perception and Force Maps

    Apr 7, 2026Elizaveta Semenyakina, Ivan Snegirev, Mariya Lezina +3Robotic GraspingDexterous Manipulation

    Intelligent Space Robotics Laboratory, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology

  7. Long-Reach Robotic Cleaning for Lunar Solar Arrays

    Mar 31, 2026Stanley Wang, Velin Kojouharov, Long Yin Chung +2RoboticsSpace Robotics

    All authors are with the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.

  8. DecompGrind: A Decomposition Framework for Robotic Grinding via Cutting-Surface Planning and Contact-Force Adaptation

    Mar 24, 2026Shunsuke Araki, Takumi Hachimine, Yuki Saito +3Robotic Tool UseRobotic Manipulation

    Division of Information Science, Graduate School of Science and Technology, Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), Nara, Japan. · Haptics Research Center, Keio University, Kanagawa, Japan. · Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. +1

  9. Surface-Constrained Offline Warping with Contact-Aware Online Pose Projection for Safe Robotic Trajectory Execution

    Mar 17, 2026Farong Wang, Sai Swaminathan, Fei LiuRobot Motion GenerationRobot Trajectory Tracking

    All authors are with the Min H. Kao Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), Knoxville, TN 37996, USA.

  10. ForceVLA2: Unleashing Hybrid Force-Position Control with Force Awareness for Contact-Rich Manipulation

    Mar 16, 2026Yang Li, Zhaxizhuoma, Hongru Jiang +11Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationForce-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

    Tongji University · Shanghai AI Laboratory · Lumos Robotics +6

  11. Master Micro Residual Correction with Adaptive Tactile Fusion and Force-Mixed Control for Contact-Rich Manipulation

    Mar 16, 2026Xingting Li, Yifan Xie, Han Liu +4Robotic ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Shenzhen Ubiquitous Data Enabling Key Lab, Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China. · School of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China. · School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639956, Singapore.

  12. A Generalized Theory of Load Distribution in Redundantly-actuated Robotic Systems

    Mar 12, 2026Joshua Flight, Clément GosselinRobotic ManipulationRobotic Control

    Département de génie mécanique et de génie industriel, Université Laval, Canada.

  13. Learning Adaptive Force Control for Contact-Rich Sample Scraping with Heterogeneous Materials

    Mar 11, 2026Cenk Cetin, Shreyas Pouli, Gabriella PizzutoContact-Rich Robotic ManipulationForce-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

    School of Computer Science & Informatics, University of Liverpool, UK. · Department of Chemistry, University of Liverpool, UK.

  14. Characterization, Analytical Planning, and Hybrid Force Control for the Inspire RH56DFX Hand

    Mar 9, 2026Xuan Tan, William Xie, Nikolaus CorrellRobotic GraspingDexterous Manipulation

    Department of Computer Science, University of Colorado Boulder

  15. PhaForce: Phase-Scheduled Visual-Force Policy Learning with Slow Planning and Fast Correction for Contact-Rich Manipulation

    Mar 9, 2026Mingxin Wang, Zhirun Yue, Renhao Lu +7Robotic ControlContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

  16. Multifingered force-aware control for humanoid robots

    Mar 9, 2026Pasquale Marra, Gabriele M. Caddeo, Ugo Pattacini +1Humanoid Robot ControlForce-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

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

  17. TacDexGrasp: Compliant and Robust Dexterous Grasping with Tactile Feedback

    Mar 7, 2026Yubin Ke, Jiayi Chen, Hang Lv +2Second-Order Cone ProgrammingRobotic Grasping

    Peking University · Galbot · Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence

  18. TEGA: A Tactile-Enhanced Grasping Assistant for Assistive Robotics via Sensor Fusion and Closed-Loop Haptic Feedback

    Mar 5, 2026Hengxu You, Tianyu Zhou, Fang Xu +2Haptic Feedback for Robot TeleoperationRobotic Grasping

    All authors are with the Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA. · All authors are with Nvidia

  19. Force-Aware Residual DAgger via Trajectory Editing for Precision Insertion with Impedance Control

    Mar 4, 2026Yiou Huang, Ning Ma, Weichu Zhao +4Interactive Imitation LearningContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    All authors are with Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China.

  20. Bi-HIL: Bilateral Control-Based Multimodal Hierarchical Imitation Learning via Subtask-Level Progress Rate and Keyframe Memory for Long-Horizon Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Mar 4, 2026Thanpimon Buamanee, Masato Kobayashi, Yuki UranishiLong-Horizon Robotic ManipulationRobot Imitation Learning

    The University of Osaka · Kobe University

  21. How to Peel with a Knife: Aligning Fine-Grained Manipulation with Human Preference

    Mar 3, 2026Toru Lin, Shuying Deng, Zhao-Heng Yin +2Robotic ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    University of California, Berkeley · Tsinghua University

  22. Safe Whole-Body Loco-Manipulation via Combined Model and Learning-based Control

    Mar 2, 2026Alexander Schperberg, Yeping Wang, Stefano Di CairanoRobotic Loco-ManipulationRobotic Control

    Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA. · Yeping Wang was with Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) during part of the work of this paper, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.

  23. D-REX: Differentiable Real-to-Sim-to-Real Engine for Learning Dexterous Grasping

    Mar 1, 2026Haozhe Lou, Mingtong Zhang, Haoran Geng +9Robotic GraspingRobotics Simulation

    Physical Superintelligence (PSI) Lab, University of Southern California · Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California · Department of EECS, University of California, Berkeley

  24. Hybrid Offline-Online Reinforcement Learning for Sensorless, High-Precision Force Regulation in Surgical Robotic Grasping

    Feb 27, 2026Edoardo Fazzari, Omar Mohamed, Khalfan Hableel +2Force-Controlled Robotic ManipulationSurgical Robotics

    Dept. of Robotics, Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

  25. FAVLA: A Force-Adaptive Fast-Slow VLA model for Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Feb 27, 2026Yao Li, Peiyuan Tang, Wuyang Zhang +7Vision-Language-Action ModelsContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China · Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China · Central South University, Changsha, China

  26. Force Policy: Learning Hybrid Force-Position Control Policy under Interaction Frame for Contact-Rich Manipulation

    Feb 25, 2026Hongjie Fang, Shirun Tang, Mingyu Mei +9Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationForce-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

    Noematrix · Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Zhejiang University +2

  27. Acoustic Feedback for Closed-Loop Force Control in Robotic Grinding

    Feb 24, 2026Zongyuan Zhang, Christopher Lehnert, Will N. Browne +1Force-Controlled Robotic ManipulationRobotic Tool Use

    School of Electrical Engineering and Robotics, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George St, Brisbane, 4000, Queensland, Australia · Australian Cobotics Centre, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George St, Brisbane, 4000, Queensland, Australia · Centre for Robotics, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George St, Brisbane, 4000, Queensland, Australia

  28. Simulation-based Learning of Electrical Cabinet Assembly Using Robot Skills

    Feb 16, 2026Arik Laemmle, Balázs András Bálint, Philipp Tenbrock +4Robotic AssemblyRobot Skill Learning

    formerly Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA, Stuttgart, Germany · formerly Institut für Strahlwerkzeuge IFSW, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany · Research Laboratory on Engineering and Management Intelligence, Institute for Computer Science and Control SZTAKI, Budapest, Hungary +1

  29. TDC: Sim-to-Real Transferable Directional Compliance for Contact-Rich Manipulation

    Feb 15, 2026Yifei Yang, Anzhe Chen, Zhenjie Zhu +6Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationSim-to-Real Transfer

    Zhejiang University · Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center

  30. Learning Force-Regulated Robotic Manipulation with a Low-Cost Tactile-Force-Controlled Gripper

    Feb 10, 2026Xuhui Kang, Tongxuan Tian, Sung-Wook Lee +3Robot Policy LearningRobotic Grasping

    Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA. · Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA.