Non-Prehensile Manipulation

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Overview

Non-prehensile manipulation studies how robots move objects through contact without enclosing them in a grasp, enabling tasks such as precise pushing, rearrangement, transport, and throwing. Approaches include model-based planning and model predictive control, reinforcement learning, learned dynamics, and geometric or graph-based planners that combine object-level goals with feasible robot motions. Work spans tabletop pushing and stacking as well as bimanual manipulation, mobile robots, and dynamic contact tasks, with simulation-to-real transfer and hardware demonstrations increasingly central. A key challenge is making plans reliable despite uncertain friction, object properties, and contact changes while keeping motions physically executable.

Latest papers

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19 papers3 papers in the last four weeks, against 1 the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Shape-Aware Neural Time Fields for Rigid-Body Motion and Manipulation Planning

    Oct 16, 2026Yanming Zhou, Yuchen Liu, Ahmed H. QureshiMotion PlanningRobot Motion Planning

    Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA

  2. Non-Prehensile Multi-Object Placement with Mobile Robots via Diffusion-Based Trajectory Planning

    Oct 8, 2026Lance Pharand, Megnath Ramesh, Mark Chiu +2Non-Prehensile ManipulationRobotic Object Pushing

    Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Waterloo, ON, Canada

  3. Robust Nonprehensile Object Transport with Quadruped Robots

    Oct 5, 2026Ainoor Teimoorzadeh, Riccardo Pretto, Mario Selvaggio +2Trajectory OptimizationTrajectory Generation

    Munich Institute of Robotics & Machine Intelligence, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany · Tampere University, Finland · PRISMA Lab, Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, University of Naples Federico II, Via Claudio 21, 80125, Naples, Italy +1

  4. Non-Prehensile Throwing: A Reinforcement Learning Perspective

    Sep 1, 2026Abdullah Mustafa, Ryo Hanai, Ixchel G. Ramirez-Alpizar +4RL for RoboticsNon-Prehensile Manipulation

    National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan · Graduate School of Fundamental Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Tokyo 169-8555, Japan

  5. PREFAIL: Identifying Precursors to Failures in Robotic Lift-and-Place Tasks to Improve Task Execution Performance

    Jul 18, 2026Zeyu Shangguan, Rajas Chitale, Rutvik Patel +2Non-Prehensile ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California, USA.

  6. Grasp-Oriented Non-Prehensile Manipulation via Learning a Graspability Field

    Jun 29, 2026Licheng Zhong, Gim Hee LeeRL for RoboticsRobotic Grasping

    Department of Computer Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore

  7. Robotic Nonprehensile Object Transportation with a Hanging Tray

    Jun 8, 2026Adam Heins, Angela P. SchoelligNon-Prehensile ManipulationMobile Robotics

    University of Toronto · Toronto, Canada · Technical University of Munich +1

  8. Optimal Control Approach for Non-prehensile Ball Juggling Using a 7-DoF Manipulator

    Jun 4, 2026Joel Ramadani, Vasilije Rakčević, Riddhiman Laha +4Contact-Rich ManipulationNon-Prehensile Manipulation

    Technical University of Munich · Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany. · DLR Oberpfaffenhofen +3

  9. FlipItRight: Stable Pose-Targeted Throw-Flip Across Diverse Objects

    Jun 1, 2026Axel Dawne, Shinkyu ParkNon-Prehensile ManipulationRobot Motion Generation

    King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia

  10. Closed-Loop Object-Informed Control for Non-Prehensile Robot Manipulation

    May 29, 2026Nikola Raicevic, Hyomuk Kim, Shahid Mulla +5Non-Prehensile Robotic ManipulationLong-Horizon Robotic Manipulation

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093, United States

  11. Compliant Non-Prehensile Pushing Manipulation

    May 25, 2026Francesco Cufino, Mario Selvaggio, Fabio Amadio +1Contact-Rich ManipulationNon-Prehensile Manipulation

    The authors are with the PRISMA Lab, department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of the University of Naples Federico II, Via Claudio, 21, Naples, 80125, Italy. · The author is with Inria, CNRS, Université de Lorraine, Nancy, 54000, France (work carried out while at the ABB Corporate Research Center, Västerås, 72226, Sweden).

  12. Virtues of Ordered Chaos: Planning with Topple Actions in Tabletop Stack Rearrangement

    May 18, 2026Hao Lu, Rahul ShomeNon-Prehensile ManipulationRobot Task Planning

    School of Computing at the Australian National University, Canberra, AU

  13. Optimal Knock-Pick Planning for Tightly Packed Tabletop Blocks With Parallel Grippers

    May 18, 2026Hao Lu, Rahul ShomeContact-Rich ManipulationNon-Prehensile Manipulation

    School of Computing

  14. 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

  15. LDHP: Library-Driven Hierarchical Planning for Non-prehensile Dexterous Manipulation

    Mar 14, 2026Tierui He, Jiahui Zuo, Fumin Zhang +1Hierarchical PlanningContact-Rich Manipulation

    Shanghai Marine Equipment Research Institute, Shanghai 200031, China. · J. Zuo and F. Zhang are with The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong. · C. Zhao is with Jilin University, Changchun, China.

  16. Combined Constrained Sampling and Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Manipulation

    Feb 9, 2026Marc Toussaint, Cornelius V. Braun, Armand Jordana +5Reinforcement LearningNon-Prehensile Manipulation

    Technische Universität Berlin · Robotics Institute Germany · LAAS-CNRS +1

  17. Where to Touch, How to Contact: A Hierarchical RL-MPC Framework for Geometry-Aware Sim-to-Real Manipulation

    Jan 16, 2026Zhixian Xie, Yu Xiang, Michael Posa +1Contact-Rich ManipulationNon-Prehensile Manipulation

    Arizona State University · University of Texas at Dallas · University of Pennsylvania

  18. Model-Based Adaptive Precision Control for Tabletop Planar Pushing Under Uncertain Dynamics

    Oct 4, 2025Aydin Ahmadi, Baris AkgunContact-Rich ManipulationNon-Prehensile Manipulation

    Computer Engineering Department, Ko¸c University, Rumelifeneri Yolu, Istanbul, 34450, Istanbul, Turkey.

  19. BiNoMaP: Learning Category-Level Bimanual Non-Prehensile Manipulation Primitives

    Sep 25, 2025Huayi Zhou, Kui JiaNon-Prehensile Robotic ManipulationBimanual Robotic Manipulation

    School of Data Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen