Robotic Manipulation

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Overview

Robotic manipulation studies how machines use sensing and motion to change objects and environments, from picking and assembly to tool use and handling deformable materials. Approaches combine geometric planning and force or impedance control with imitation learning, reinforcement learning, diffusion policies, and vision-language-action models; world models, memory, tactile feedback, and human-video demonstrations are also used. Methods are tested in simulation and on real robots using suites such as LIBERO, RoboTwin, ManiSkill, and RLBench, across clutter, bimanual coordination, mobile manipulation, and precision contact tasks. A central challenge is turning benchmark performance into safe, reliable long-horizon behavior across new objects, cameras, robot bodies, and real-world dynamics, while limiting data collection and inference costs.

Latest papers

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1,704 papers341 papers in the last four weeks, up 29% on the four weeks before. 2.0% of all new papers.

  1. Manipulation Feasible Navigation Among Movable Obstacles with Discrete Contact Pushing

    Sep 20, 2026Shaohu Wang, Aiguo Song, Yulong Yuan +3Robot Motion PlanningMotion Planning

    State Key Laboratory of Bioelectronics, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Robot Perception and Control Technology, School of Instrument Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China

  2. SCULPT-VLA: Learning Structured Control through Staged Action Grounding

    Sep 20, 2026Wenbo Li, Yiteng Chen, Wei Zhang +3Visuomotor Policy LearningVision-Language-Action Models

    School of Software Engineering, South China University of Technology Guangzhou, China · Yuanwu Technology, Shenzhen, China

  3. Task aware Dynamic Movement Primitives for failure detection and recovery in contact rich manipulation

    Sep 19, 2026Bhavnashri A, Sobia Shafi, Krishnapuram Himavarshini +1Robotic ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Atomberg Technologies Limited, India · Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), India · Appian Corporation, India

  4. Tip Manipulation in Soft Everting Robots via Wall Retraction and Deployable Fingers

    Sep 19, 2026Nelson Badillo Perez, Niccolo Pagliarani, Matteo Cianchetti +1Soft RoboticsRobotic Manipulation

    John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA · The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy

  5. Search, Ground, Plan: Functional Sufficiency for Task and Motion Planning under Incomplete Scene Knowledge

    Sep 19, 2026Narendhiran Vijayakumar, Nav Singhal, Girish Varma +1Motion PlanningRobotic Manipulation

    Robotics Research Center, IIIT Hyderabad · Center for Security, Theory and Algorithmic Research, IIIT Hyderabad

  6. Anatomy of a Closed-Loop Collapse: A Causal Case Study of a Compressed VLA Policy

    Sep 19, 2026Fengze JiaRobotic Policy EvaluationVision-Language-Action Models

    The Ohio State University · The Ohio State University Columbus, OH, USA

  7. Physical-Touch Observability from Wrist Wrench in Granular Scooping

    Sep 19, 2026Hongyi Lin, Song Zhang, Xubo Liu +1Robotic PerceptionRobotic Manipulation

    School of Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University · Tsing-AI(Shanghai) Technology Co., Ltd

  8. ForceRFT: Refining VLA Actions through Force-Guided Residual Reinforcement Learning

    Sep 19, 2026Yichen Wang, Chaoyang Zhang, Xuqi Su +3Robotic ManipulationVision-Language-Action Models

    College of Information Science and Technology, Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, Ningbo 315200, China. · Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Food Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, Jiangsu, China. · School of Automation and Intelligent Sensing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. +3

  9. Whole-Body UMI: Transferring UMI Manipulation Skills to Humanoid Whole-Body Manipulation via Real-Time Motion Generation

    Sep 19, 2026Yuxuan Nai, Leixin Chang, Liangjing Yang +2Whole-Body Robotic ManipulationRobot Motion Generation

    Zhejiang University · Hong Kong Embodied AI Lab · Mondo Robotics +1

  10. Expert-Play Contouring Control: Faster-than-Demonstration Planning from Slow Expert and Fast Play

    Sep 19, 2026Seunghoon Cho, Wonsuhk Jung, Sundhar Vinodh Sangeetha +1Robot Motion PlanningRobotic Manipulation

    Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea · Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

  11. BEACON: Belief-Enabled Adaptive CONtrol for Imitation Learning under Uncertainty

    Sep 19, 2026Moonyoung Lee, Soumojit Bhattacharya, George Kantor +1Robot Imitation LearningImitation Learning

    Carnegie Mellon University, Robotics Institute, Pittsburgh PA 15213, USA

  12. A Direct Rigid Transmission 2-DoF Wrist Extension for Tendon-Driven Hand

    Sep 19, 2026Yujie Pang, Sadman Sakib, Mohammad Abdullah Al FaruqueRobotic ManipulationRobotic Hand Design

    The authors are with the Nhu Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA. · Contributed during participation in the UCInspire program at UCI

  13. SHAFT: A Slack-Compensating, Helical-Buckling-Attenuating Flexible-Shaft Transmission for Lightweight Multi-DoF Manipulation

    Sep 19, 2026Tomoya Takahashi, Moses Gladson Selvamuthu, Richiro Tadakuma +1Mechanism DesignRobotics

    OMRON SINIC X Corporation, Hongo 5-24-5, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan · Yamagata University, 4 Chome-3-16 Jonan, Yonezawa, Japan · OMRON SINIC X

  14. FRAMES: Failure Recovery And Monitoring of Embodied Skills for Humanoid Loco-Manipulation

    Sep 18, 2026Ajay Vikram Periasami, Xinyuan Luo, Haoyu Li +1Humanoid Loco-ManipulationLong-Horizon Robotic Manipulation

    Department of Computer Science, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA · Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA

  15. Gripper-Aware Automatic Dense Packing of Irregular Objects

    Sep 18, 2026Tianhao Qin, Connor McCann, Berk Calli +1Robotic Manipulation

    Robotics Engineering Department Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609, USA

  16. MAAP: Multi-Agent Active Perception for Collaborative Manipulation

    Sep 18, 2026Bruno N. Y. Chen, Li Kang, Heng Zhou +4Active Vision for Robot ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    Carnegie Mellon University · Shanghai Jiao Tong University · University of Science and Technology of China +3

  17. A Sim-to-Real Integration Pipeline for Training and Deployment of Chunk-Based VLA Manipulation Policies

    Sep 18, 2026Mathilde Kappel, Clémence Grislain, Mohamed Chetouani +5Sim-to-Real TransferRobotic Manipulation

    Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR), CNRS, Sorbonne University, Paris, F-75005, France

  18. ForceTwin: Physics-informed Digital Twins for Robotic Manipulation from Instrumented Human Interaction

    Sep 18, 2026Tim Engelbracht, René Zurbrügg, Mayank Mittal +4Digital TwinsRobotic Manipulation

    ETH Zurich · NVIDIA · Microsoft +1

  19. Robotic Multiphase Interaction: Manipulating Coupled Liquid and Solid Dynamics with a World Model

    Sep 18, 2026Yixuan Feng, Peng WangRobotic ManipulationDynamic Robotic Manipulation

    College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore, 9 Engineering Dr 1, Singapore,117575. · Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP), University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, United Kingdom.

  20. A Unified Dynamic Force Guidance Framework for Performance-Optimized Kinesthetic Teaching

    Sep 18, 2026Chunxin Li, Jianhua Wu, Zhenhua Xiong +1Robotic ControlHuman-Robot Collaboration

    State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, Institute of Robotics, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

  21. ProTracer: Proprioception-Guided Failure Diagnosis in Robot Manipulation

    Sep 18, 2026Chang Dong, Mehdi Hosseinzadeh, King Hang Wong +4Robot Failure DetectionRobotic Manipulation

    Australian Institute for Machine Learning, Adelaide University, Australia. · School of Allied Health and Human Performance, Adelaide University, Australia.

  22. MicroHookACT: Monocular Microscopic Vision Guided Visuomotor Policy for Flexible Microelectrode Hooking

    Sep 18, 2026Yitong Chen, Fangbo Qin, Yang Wang +3Robotic ManipulationVisuomotor Policy Learning

    Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China. · School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China. · State Key Laboratory of Brain Cognition and Brain-Inspired Intelligence Technology, Shanghai 200031, China. +1

  23. KnowDemo: Knowledge-Guided Robot Demonstration Generation from Human Videos

    Sep 18, 2026Zhiyuan Gao, Yanxiang Zhan, Mohammad Khoshnazar +2Robot Demonstration GenerationSynthetic Data Generation for Robotics

    University of Bremen · Robotics Institute Germany (RIG)

  24. FOCAL-VLA: Subtask-Guided Geometry Distillation and Implicit World Modeling for Vision-Language-Action Models

    Sep 18, 2026Zhiyuan Gao, Di Wen, Yanxiang Zhan +4Vision-Language-Action ModelsRobotic Manipulation

    University of Bremen, Germany · Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany · Robotics Institute Germany (RIG)

  25. MetaPusher: Meta Learning and Planning for Nonprehensile Manipulation of Unseen Objects with Rapid Online Adaption

    Sep 17, 2026Donghyung Lee, Seyedali Golestaneh, Jaskrit Singh +3Non-Prehensile Robotic ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

  26. Demonstration Synthesis from a Single Scan via Gaussian Splatting for Visuomotor Policy Learning

    Sep 17, 2026Beichen Wang, Yuen-Hei Yeung, V. R. Sridhar Devarakonda +1Robot Demonstration GenerationSynthetic Data Generation for Robotics

    George Mason University · New York University

  27. DEXTERA: From a Single Image to Deployable Dexterous Manipulation via Real-to-Sim-to-Real

    Sep 17, 2026Jin Wu, Lianjie Yuan, Zeyan Sun +4Sim-to-Real TransferSynthetic Data Generation for Robotics

    The University of Texas at Austin · University of Florida · BrainCo

  28. Catch Me If You Can: Real-Time Feedback Denoising for Responsive VLAs

    Sep 17, 2026Yiheng Ji, Xingru Zhou, Luis Sentis +1Closed-Loop Control of VLA ModelsVision-Language-Action Models

    The University of Texas at Austin · University of Central Florida

  29. Shake to Learn: Dynamic Interrogation of Hidden Object Physics for Robotic Manipulation with Physical Reservoir Computing

    Sep 17, 2026Wen Sin Lor, Jun Wang, Suyi LiRobotic PerceptionRobotic Manipulation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24060, USA · Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA

  30. Coding Agents with Harness for Safe Robot Control

    Sep 17, 2026Bingxin Xu, Yuzhang Shang, Zhen Dong +1Robot SafetyRobotic Manipulation

    USC · UCF · UCSB