Robotic Control

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Overview

Robotic control turns sensor readings and task goals into actions, from steering mobile robots to coordinating humanoid bodies and handling delicate contact. Methods range from feedback control, inverse kinematics, and model predictive control to reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and vision-language-action policies. Current work often combines these approaches, adding force or tactile feedback, safety constraints, and sim-to-real adaptation to improve performance on manipulation, locomotion, and human-robot interaction tasks. A central challenge is achieving safe, stable behavior that generalizes to unfamiliar conditions while meeting real-time limits and retaining task performance.

Latest papers

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587 papers95 papers in the last four weeks, up 10% on the four weeks before. 0.5% of all new papers.

  1. Sim-to-Real Transfer for Muscle-Actuated Robots via Generalized Actuator Networks

    Apr 10, 2026Jan Schneider, Mridul Mahajan, Le Chen +4Sim-to-Real TransferRobotics

    Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Tübingen · Boston University · ELLIS Institute Tübingen +4

  2. SafeMind: A Risk-Aware Differentiable Control Framework for Adaptive and Safe Quadruped Locomotion

    Apr 10, 2026Zukun Zhang, Kai Shu, Mingqiao MoRobotic ControlRobot Safety

    The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong, China · Alibaba, Beijing, China · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, No.1 Yanqihu East Rd, Huairou District, Beijing, China

  3. A Unified Multi-Layer Framework for Skill Acquisition from Imperfect Human Demonstrations

    Apr 9, 2026Zi-Qi Yang, Mehrdad R. KermaniCompliant Robot ControlRobot Skill Learning

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Western University, London, ON N6A 5B9, Canada.

  4. HEX: Humanoid-Aligned Experts for Cross-Embodiment Whole-Body Manipulation

    Apr 9, 2026Shuanghao Bai, Meng Li, Xinyuan Lv +15Flow Matching for Action GenerationRobotic Control

    Beijing Innovation Center of Humanoid Robotics · Xi’an Jiaotong University · Nankai University +1

  5. Safe Large-Scale Robust Nonlinear MPC in Milliseconds via Reachability-Constrained System Level Synthesis on the GPU

    Apr 8, 2026Jeffrey Fang, Glen ChouRobotic ControlNonlinear MPC

    Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30308

  6. CMP: Robust Whole-Body Tracking for Loco-Manipulation via Competence Manifold Projection

    Apr 8, 2026Ziyang Cheng, Haoyu Wei, Hang Yin +4Loco-ManipulationRobotic Control

    Tsinghua University

  7. Control Architecture and experimental validation of a Novel Surgical Robotic Instrument

    Apr 7, 2026Doina Pisla, Ionut Zima, Calin Vaida +7Surgical RoboticsRobotic Control

    CESTER · CESTER, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, European University of Technology, EU, Technical Sciences Academy of Romania, Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Romania · CESTER, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, European University of Technology, EU, Cluj-Napoca, Romania +2

  8. Synergizing Efficiency and Reliability for Continuous Mobile Manipulation

    Apr 7, 2026Chengkai Wu, Ruilin Wang, Yixin Zeng +7Mobile ManipulationRobotic Control

    Robotics and Autonomous Systems Thrust, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China · Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

  9. Bilinear Model Predictive Control Framework of the OncoReach, a Tendon-Driven Steerable Stylet for Brachytherapy

    Apr 6, 2026Pejman Kheradmand, Behnam Moradkhani, Mir Masoud Ale Ali +3Robotic InsertionRobotic Control

    Healthcare Robotics and Telesurgery Laboratory (Heartlab), University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA. · Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Louisville School of Medicine, Louisville, KY, USA.

  10. Veo-Act: Enhancing VLA Policies with Frontier Video Models

    Apr 6, 2026Zhongru Zhang, Chenghan Yang, Qingzhou Lu +4Robotic ControlLanguage-Conditioned Robot Manipulation

    Tsinghua University

  11. A Survey on Sensor-based Planning and Control for Unmanned Underwater Vehicles

    Apr 6, 2026Shivam Vishwakarma, Tejal Bedmutha, Dharmendra Kumar Patel +2Underwater RoboticsAutonomous Underwater Navigation

  12. VA-FastNavi-MARL: Real-Time Robot Control with Multimedia-Driven Meta-Reinforcement Learning

    Apr 5, 2026Yang Zhang, Shengxi Jing, Fengxiang Wang +2Real-Time Robot ControlRobotic Control

    Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65201, USA · School of Construction Machinery, Chang’an University, Xi’an, 710064, Shaanxi, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, Hubei University, Wuhan, 430062, Hubei, China +1

  13. From Prompt to Physical Action: Structured Backdoor Attacks on LLM-Mediated Robotic Control Systems

    Apr 4, 2026Mingyang Xie, Jin Wei-KocsisLLM Backdoor AttacksLanguage Model-Based Control

    School of Applied and Creative Computing, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

  14. Tune to Learn: How Controller Gains Shape Robot Policy Learning

    Apr 2, 2026Antonia Bronars, Younghyo Park, Pulkit AgrawalRobot Policy LearningRobotic Control

    MIT · MIT Improbable AI Lab

  15. Robust Autonomous Control of a Magnetic Millirobot in In Vitro Cardiac Flow

    Apr 2, 2026Anuruddha Bhattacharjee, Xinhao Chen, Lamar O. Mair +3Robotic ControlRobotics

    Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. · Division of Magnetic Manipulation and Particle Research, Weinberg Medical Physics, Inc., Rockville, MD 20852, USA. · Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

  16. MorphoGuard: A Morphology-Based Whole-Body Interactive Motion Controller

    Apr 2, 2026Chenjin Wang, Zheng Yan, Yanmin Zhou +2Robotic ControlWhole-Body Robotic Manipulation

    Shanghai Research Institute for Intelligent Autonomous Systems Shanghai 201210, China · College of Electronics and Information Engineering (Tongji University) Shanghai 201210, China

  17. Planning for Change: Reinforcement Learning Combined with Bounded Extremum Seeking for Robotic Control under Distribution Shift

    Apr 1, 2026Shaifalee Saxena, Rafael Fierro, Alexander ScheinkerRobotic ControlReinforcement Learning

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA · Los Alamos National Lab, Los Alamos, NM 87547, USA

  18. Passive iFIR filters for data-driven velocity control in robotics

    Mar 31, 2026Yi Zhang, Zixing Wang, Fulvio ForniRobotic ControlData-Driven Control

    Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK.

  19. Kilohertz-Safe: A Scalable Framework for Constrained Dexterous Retargeting

    Mar 31, 2026Yinxiao Tian, Ziyi Yang, Zinan Zhao +1Motion RetargetingRobotic Control

    Department of Automation at the University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China, 230026.

  20. Control Without Control: Defining Implicit Interaction Paradigms for Autonomous Assistive Robots

    Mar 30, 2026Janavi Gupta, Kavya Puthuveetil, Dimitra Tsakona +3Human-Robot InteractionRobotic Control

    Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA · Imperial College London, London, UK

  21. Heracles: Bridging Precise Tracking and Generative Synthesis for General Humanoid Control

    Mar 29, 2026Zelin Tao, Zeran Su, Peiran Liu +13Humanoid Robot ControlRobotic Control

  22. Learning Smooth and Robust Space Robotic Manipulation of Dynamic Target via Inter-frame Correlation

    Mar 29, 2026Siyi Lang, Hongyi Gao, Yingxin Zhang +5Space RoboticsDynamic Robotic Manipulation

    Research Center for Intelligent Robotics, School of Astronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China · School of Automation, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China · School of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China

  23. FlowRL: A Taxonomy and Modular Framework for Reinforcement Learning with Diffusion Policies

    Mar 29, 2026Chenxiao Gao, Edward Chen, Tianyi Chen +1Flow-Based Policy LearningDiffusion Policy

    Georgia Institute of Technology

  24. Realtime-VLA V2: Learning to Run VLAs Fast, Smooth, and Accurate

    Mar 27, 2026Chen Yang, Yucheng Hu, Yunchao Ma +3Robotic ControlVLMs for Robotics

    Dexmal

  25. A Minimum-Energy Control Approach for Redundant Mobile Manipulators in Physical Human-Robot Interaction Applications

    Mar 26, 2026Davide Tebaldi, Niccolò Paradisi, Fabio Pini +1Robotic ControlContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    The authors are with the “Enzo Ferrari” Department of Engineering, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, via Pietro Vivarelli 10, 41125 Modena, Italy · The author is with the Department of Engineering for Innovation Medicine, University of Verona

  26. Wireless bioelectronic control architectures for biohybrid robotic systems

    Mar 26, 2026Hiroyuki Tetsuka, Minoru HiranoRobotic ControlRobotics

    Frontier Management Office, Toyota Central R&D Labs., Inc., 41-1 Yokomichi, Nagakute, Aichi 480-1192, Japan

  27. PCHC: Enabling Preference Conditioned Humanoid Control via Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 25, 2026Huanyu Li, Dewei Wang, Xinmiao Wang +4Robotic ControlHumanoid Robot Control

    Harbin Institute of Technology · University of Science and Technology of China · Harbin Engineering University +2

  28. SafeFlow: Real-Time Text-Driven Humanoid Whole-Body Control via Physics-Guided Rectified Flow and Selective Safety Gating

    Mar 25, 2026Hanbyel Cho, Sang-Hun Kim, Jeonguk Kang +1Robotic ControlHumanoid Robot Control

    Physical AI Lab, RX, Samsung Electronics

  29. AgentChemist: A Multi-Agent Experimental Robotic Platform Integrating Chemical Perception and Precise Control

    Mar 25, 2026Xiangyi Wei, Fei Wang, Haotian Zhang +6Laboratory AutomationAutonomous Experimentation

    School of Computer Science and Technology, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China. · School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China. · School of Data Science and Engineering, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China. +1

  30. Robot Arm Control via Cognitive Map Learners

    Mar 24, 2026Nathan McDonald, Colyn Seeley, Christian BrazeauRobotic Control

    Air Force Research Laboratory · Rochester Institute of Technology