Impedance Control

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Overview

Impedance control shapes how a robot responds to motion errors and contact forces, letting it be stiff for accurate motion or compliant for safer interaction. Methods include fixed or variable stiffness and damping, impedance and admittance control, passivity and barrier-function safety filters, and model-predictive control; newer policies also learn compliance from demonstrations or adapt it using vision and force cues. Researchers evaluate these methods in tasks such as peg insertion, wiping, teleoperation, legged locomotion, and rehabilitation, measuring task success, tracking error, contact force, and stability. A central challenge is balancing accurate, efficient motion with safe compliance while ensuring that changing gains remain stable and physically achievable under uncertain contact, robot dynamics, and communication delays.

Latest papers

CardsList

44 papers11 papers in the last four weeks, up 83% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. Nonlinear Control of Aerial Manipulator

    Oct 25, 2026Sandesh ThapaAerial RoboticsAerial Manipulation

    School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Control, Robotics & Automation Lab (CoRAL), Spring 2017 Oklahoma State University Stillwater, Oklahoma

  2. Multimodal Interaction Estimation for Contact-Aware Adaptive Impedance Control

    Oct 16, 2026Mateusz Jaszczuk, Paris Perdikaris, Nadia FigueroaImpedance ControlContact Force Estimation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania

  3. A Flow-Theoretic Multimodal Control Framework Fusing Mental and Physical Engagement for Upper-Limb Rehabilitation

    Oct 15, 2026Jun Leng, Pengcheng Li, Hanze Wang +2Assistive RoboticsContinuous Control

    Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China · Aerospace Center Hospital, School of Life Science, and the Key Laboratory of Convergence Medical Engineering System and Healthcare Technology, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

  4. Manifold Generative Annealing for Contact Constraint-aware Impedance Control with Reinforcement Learning Prior

    Oct 15, 2026Zhilin He, Guoquan Qi, Changliu LiuContact-Rich Robotic ManipulationImpedance Control

    Carnegie Mellon University · Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences

  5. A Mode-Unified, Continuous, and Biomimetic Control Strategy of a Robotic Lower Limb Prosthesis

    Oct 13, 2026Hanjun Kim, Sixu Zhou, John Shim +3Robotic ControlAssistive Robotics

    Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0405 USA · Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0405 and with the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA 30332-0405 USA

  6. Intent-guided Adaptive Stiffening for Visuomotor Policies under Unknown Resistance

    Oct 13, 2026Francesco Cufino, Carmela Mariniello, Mario Selvaggio +2Robotic ControlRobotic Manipulation

    PRISMA Lab, Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University of Naples Federico II, Naples, Italy. · The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.

  7. Task-Space Motion-Force Nonlinear Model Predictive Control for Precise and Compliant Control under Uncertainties

    Oct 12, 2026Quang-Nam Nguyen, Ludovic RighettiRobotic ControlNonlinear MPC

    Machines in Motion Laboratory, Center for Robotics and Embodied Intelligence, New York University (NYU), USA. · Artificial and Natural Intelligence Toulouse Institute (ANITI), France.

  8. Constraint-Decomposed Impedance Control from Generative Policy for Articulated Object Manipulation

    Oct 12, 2026Kyungseo Park, Byeongdo Lim, Jungbin Lim +2Impedance ControlRobotic Manipulation

    Seoul National University · Department of Mechanical Engineering, KAIST

  9. Demonstration Calibrated Port-Hamiltonian Retuning for Manipulation Policies

    Oct 5, 2026Yulong Yang, Fan Wu, Christine Allen-Blanchette +1Robot Policy AdaptationImpedance Control

    Princeton University · Arizona State University · Siemens Foundation Technologies

  10. KPI: A Promptable Kernel for Physical Interaction on Humanoids

    Sep 28, 2026Yikai Wang, Honghao Zhu, Xiao Hu +5Humanoid Robot ControlImpedance Control

    Carnegie Mellon University. · Autel US. · Northeastern University.

  11. Contact-Aware Impedance Controller for Robot-Assisted Ultrasound Imaging

    Sep 28, 2026MD Miraj Arefin, M Efe TiryakiImpedance ControlUltrasound Imaging

    Center for Robotics and AI (ROMER), Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

  12. CompliantWBC: Whole-Body Compliance for Heavy Humanoids via Force Latent Estimation and Residual Impedance Targets

    Sep 27, 2026Tan-Dzung Do, Cuc T. Trinh, Tuan Dat Phuong +4RL for RoboticsHumanoid Robot Control

    VinRobotics · National University of Singapore · VinUniversity +1

  13. Imp-ACT: Adaptive Impedance Control and Action Chunking with Transformers to Learn Contact-Rich Manipulation from Demonstrations

    Sep 25, 2026Luca Zanetti, Doganay Sirintuna, Idil Ozdamar +3Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationImpedance Control

    Human-Robot Interfaces and Interaction Laboratory, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy · Safe AI Lab, Carnegie Mellon University

  14. Impedance Cloning: Learning Equilibrium Point Parameters for Contact-Rich Manipulation

    Sep 25, 2026Hayato Takahashi, Ryoga Oishi, Yuki Kasuga +1Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationForce-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

    Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan

  15. Continuous Manifold-Decomposed Impedance Retargeting for Contact-Rich Imitation Learning

    Sep 14, 2026Jiahao Liu, Kento Kawaharazuka, Tasuku Makabe +1Impedance ControlForce-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

    Department of Mechano-Informatics Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo Tokyo, Japan

  16. Constraint-Grounded Reinforcement Learning for Variable Impedance Control in Contact-Rich Robotic Insertion

    Sep 11, 2026Lin He, Min DengRobotic InsertionImpedance Control

    Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996 USA

  17. Gait-Dependent Effects on Quadruped Locomotion for Load-Carrying using Passive Mechanism

    Sep 10, 2026Giovanni B. Dessy, Claudio Semini, Victor BarasuolLegged RoboticsRobotics

    Dynamic Legged Systems, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa/GE, 16163, Italy

  18. 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

  19. VIDP: Variable Impedance Diffusion Policy for Compliant Robot Manipulation from Diverse Demonstrations

    Aug 6, 2026Hisham Khalil, Neil Fernandes, Thomas M. Kwok +2Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationDiffusion Policy

    Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada · School of Computer Science and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

  20. Hybrid Impedance-Admittance Control with Multi-Link Aerial Robot for Contact-Rich Surface Sliding Task

    Aug 3, 2026Zicheng Luo, Maolin Lei, Jinjie Li +3Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationAdmittance Control

    Department of Mechanical-Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan

  21. MDIR: A Task-Manifold Impedance Retargeting Method for Contact-Rich Teleoperation

    Jul 31, 2026Liu Jiahao, Kento Kawaharazuka, Tasuku Makabe +1Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationRobot Teleoperation

    Department of Mechano-Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

  22. Plug, Play and Comply: Plugin-Based Compliant Control in ROS 2

    Jul 24, 2026Mihael Simonič, Xiaocong LiRobotic ControlImpedance Control

    College of Information Science and Technology, Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, Ningbo 315200, China · Zhejiang Key Laboratory of Industrial Intelligence and Digital Twin, Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, Ningbo 315200, China

  23. Impedance Control of Ship-Borne Manipulators via Optimization-based Task-Space Inverse Dynamics

    Jul 24, 2026Lingxiao Meng, Bi-Ke Zhu, Xuheng Gao +5Robot Trajectory TrackingContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

  24. 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

  25. Impedance-Guided Programmable Transmission of Localized Deformation in Modular Soft Metamaterials

    Jul 9, 2026Weiyun Xu, Daewon Hong, Zhi Zhao +2Materials ScienceImpedance Control

    Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. · Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. · National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.

  26. Real-Time Compliance and Position Control of a Hyper-redundant Soft Robotic Arm

    Jun 29, 2026Runze Zuo, Tianhua Zou, Naike Wu +2Robotic ControlImpedance Control

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.

  27. Contact-Consistent Interaction Dynamics Normalization for Predictive Physical Human--Robot Interaction

    Jun 12, 2026Yongyan CaoRobotic ControlRobust Control

    Voryx Robotics, San Jose, CA 95136, USA

  28. Ensuring Interaction Safety in Multitask Exoskeleton Control: A Simulation-Trained Variable Impedance Framework

    Jun 4, 2026Muyuan Ma, Houcheng Li, Haotian Zhai +4Robotic ControlImpedance Control

  29. Safety-Critical Adaptive Impedance Control via Nonsmooth Control Barrier Functions under State and Input Constraints

    May 27, 2026Faisal Lawan, Xiaoran Han, Joaquin Carrasco +2Control Barrier FunctionsRobust Control

    Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Manchester, M13 9PL, United Kingdom

  30. Bilateral Teleoperation with Compliant 6-DOF Pose-and-Force Sensing

    May 19, 2026Yue Feng, Weicheng Huang, I-Ming ChenAdmittance ControlRobot Teleoperation

    Robotics Research Centre Nanyang Technological University Singapore · WinGs Robotic USA