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. ContactGuard: Pre-Contact Execution Monitoring with Action-Conditioned Latent World Models

    Aug 13, 2026Gehan Zheng, Matthew Johnson-Roberson, Weiming ZhiRobot Failure DetectionContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    College of Connected Computing, Vanderbilt University, USA. · School of Computer Science, The University of Sydney, Australia. · 3Australian Centre for Robotics, The University of Sydney, Australia.

  2. NestDex: Nested Policy Learning with Copilot Assisted Teleoperation for Dexterous Manipulation

    Aug 13, 2026James Zhao, Jinhe Tang, Mingyuan Ba +1Robot TeleoperationVisuomotor Policy Learning

    School of Computer Science and 2Australian Centre for Robotics, The University of Sydney, Australia · College of Connected Computing, Vanderbilt University, TN, USA

  3. Predictive Relative-Velocity Steering for Safe Robotic Manipulator Teleoperation in Dynamic Environments

    Aug 13, 2026Changhao Hu, Zeyi Liu, Songqiao Hu +3Robot TeleoperationRobotic Manipulation

    Zhejiang University-University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Institute, Zhejiang University, Haining 314400, China. · Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. · Institute for Embodied Intelligence and Robotics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. +1

  4. HandEdit: A Unified Benchmark for Egocentric Human-to-Robot Dexterous Hand Image Editing

    Aug 12, 2026Zhenjie Yang, Xingyu Jiao, Guopeng Zhong +18Image-to-Image TranslationSynthetic Data Generation for Robotics

    Inspire Robots · Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Fudan University +3

  5. Policy-Induced Hand Priors in Humanoid Dual-Arm Manipulation: Diagnosing and Mitigating Initial-Pose Dependence

    Aug 12, 2026Chaeyeon Jung, Juyoun ParkBimanual Robotic ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    Center for Humanoid Research, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), Republic of Korea.

  6. StellaVLA: In-Context Structured Demonstration for Generalizable Vision-Language-Action Models

    Aug 12, 2026Siyu Xu, Yunke Wang, Zijian Wang +6Reasoning for VLA ModelsContinual Learning for VLA Models

    StellarEdge AI Technical Team

  7. Keep the Future, Drop the Rollout: RIFT for World Action Models

    Aug 12, 2026Chushan Zhang, Jinguang Tong, Xuesong Li +2Efficient VLA Model InferenceEfficient Inference for World Action Models

    Australian National University

  8. Aerial Layouting: Design and Control of a Compliant and Actuated End-Effector for Precise In-flight Marking on Ceilings

    Aug 11, 2026Christian Lanegger, Marco Ruggia, Marco Tognon +2Robotic ConstructionRobotic Manipulation

    Autonomous Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

  9. Flex-ππ: A Multi-Stream World-Action Model with Compute Flexibility

    Aug 11, 2026Ge Yan, Jinghao Liu, Yuzhi Fan +4World ModelsWorld Model-Based Planning

    University of Washington · Allen Institute for AI

  10. StageWAM: Joint-Embedding Stage Prediction for World-Action Models in Robot Manipulation

    Aug 11, 2026Xiao Liu, Yuguang Yang, Xi Wang +6World Models for RoboticsJoint-Embedding Predictive Architecture

    Institute for AI Industry Research (AIR), Tsinghua University · School of Electronic Information Engineering, Beihang University · AIR Wuxi Innovation Center, Tsinghua University +3

  11. TCAM for Autonomous Deformable Manipulation: The RMC2 Champion System for WBCD 2026 Track 4

    Aug 11, 2026Guangrui Shen, Zhili He, Shigang Wang +2Deformable Object ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    TermiTech, Shenzhen, China

  12. FACT: Failure-Aware Causal Training for World-Action Models

    Aug 10, 2026Quanquan Peng, Yutong Liang, Rui Yan +2Causal World ModelsAction-Conditioned World Models

    University of California San Diego

  13. RoboSeg: Online Part-Level Semantic Reconstruction for Robotic Manipulation via a Single Eye-in-Hand Camera

    Aug 10, 2026Zhaochen Lan, Mengxiang LinRobotic Grasping3D Semantic Mapping

    School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China

  14. Efficient Real-World Online Reinforcement Learning for Robot Manipulation via Centralized Training and Critic Decomposition

    Aug 10, 2026Changhao Li, Yifang Zhang, Heng Zhang +6Reinforcement LearningRobotic RL

    HHCM, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy · DIBRIS, University of Genova, Genova, Italy · Human-Robot Interfaces and Interaction Lab, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy +1

  15. TAMS: Task-Aware Multi-View Adaptive Streaming for Wireless Telerobotic Manipulation

    Aug 10, 2026Zexin Deng, Zhenhui Yuan, Lu Tian +2Robot TeleoperationRobotic Manipulation

    School of Engineering University of Warwick Coventry, United Kingdom · Pengcheng Laboratory & Southern Univ. of Sci. & Tech. Shenzhen, China

  16. Robotic Fabric Alignment System for Sewing Using Global Local Weighted ICP

    Aug 10, 2026Wenbo Dong, Dipankar Bhattacharya Member, Kai Tang +5Object Pose EstimationRobotic Manipulation

    JC STEM Lab of Robotics for Soft Materials, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China · Dyson School of Design Engineering, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom · Unprecedented-scale Data Analytics Center, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-0845, Japan +4

  17. Skills in Weights, Memory in Code: Hybrid Learning for Memory-Dependent Robot Manipulation

    Aug 10, 2026Yunhao Zhao, Zhenyang Ni, Haoyang Chen +2Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationRobot Skill Learning

    Northwestern University · University of Minnesota · Stanford University

  18. JEPA-WAM: Learning Vision-Language-Action Policies with Joint-Embedding World Modeling

    Aug 10, 2026Yihan Lin, Jiawei He, Shifeng Bao +6Joint-Embedding Predictive ArchitectureRobotic Manipulation

    School of Information, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China · XYZ Embodied AI, Beijing, China · Key Laboratory of Data Engineering and Knowledge Engineering, Beijing, China +3

  19. SAFE-CHEM: Uncertainty-Aware Policy Switching for Robust Robotic Chemistry

    Aug 10, 2026Laura Jones, Shazil Shahzad, Ayesha Sana +1Robotic ControlRobot Safety

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

  20. SpeedTuning: Speeding Up Policy Execution with Lightweight Reinforcement Learning

    Aug 10, 2026David D. Yuan, Tony Z. Zhao, Kaylee Burns +1Robot Policy LearningRobot Skill Learning

    Stanford University

  21. PEEL: Parallel Extraction for Long-Horizon Disassembly Planning via Scale-Invariant Sampling

    Aug 9, 2026Servet B. Bayraktar, Andreas Orthey, Zachary Kingston +1Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

  22. TEMPO: Semantic-Action Decoupled RL Post-Training for Vision-Language-Action Models

    Aug 7, 2026Ziheng Liu, Quantao YangRobotic ManipulationVision-Language-Action Models

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou 310018, China. · Department of Robotics, Perception, and Learning, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.

  23. Representation Handoffs for OpenArm-Based Laboratory Mobile Manipulation

    Aug 7, 2026Yang Shen, Chonghao Cheng, Ziyi Zhao +6Language-Conditioned Robot ManipulationMobile Manipulation

    University of Technology Sydney · Southern University of Science and Technology

  24. C2Dex: Contact-Consistent Reconstruction and Retargeting for Dexterous Manipulation from Monocular Video

    Aug 7, 2026Jie Ren, Zhehao Jiang, Yinhong Yang +9Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation3D Reconstruction

    1Nanjing University, Nanjing, China. · 2China Mobile Research Institute, Beijing, China.

  25. Real-time Whole-Body Motion Planning for Mobile Manipulators Carrying Arbitrarily Shaped Payloads via Kinematically-Coupled SVSDF

    Aug 7, 2026Yisheng Li, Longji Yin, Tingrui Zhang +6Signed Distance FunctionsMobile Manipulation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Hong Kong · Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, Tsinghua University

  26. Decoupling Intention from Trajectory: A Representational Deduction Framework for World Action Models

    Aug 7, 2026Xiangkai Ma, Yue Ma, Junjie Wang +6Robot Motion GenerationRobotic Manipulation

    1NJU · 2HKUST · 3CUHK-SZ +4

  27. GWM-VLA: Geometry-Aware Latent World Modeling for Vision-Language-Action Learning

    Aug 7, 2026Yanping Zhao, Hang Yu, Yiwei Wang +8World Model LearningRobotic Manipulation

    Tongji University

  28. DyPES-VLA: Learning Shared Dynamics Priors and Embodiment-Specific Control for Cross-Embodiment Manipulation

    Aug 6, 2026Junfeng Li, Junjie He, Zhide Zhong +12Cross-Embodiment Robot LearningRobotics

    1The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, China · 2COCO Matrix, Shanghai, China

  29. GeniWorld: A Generalizable Interactive World Model for Robotic Manipulation via Visual Actions

    Aug 6, 2026Chenghao Gu, Hanyang Yu, Jingbo Zhang +7Action-Conditioned World ModelsRobotic Policy Evaluation

    Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University · Tencent Robotics X · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology +1

  30. Coordinated Multi-Robot Disassembly for Makespan Optimization of Large-Scale Assemblies

    Aug 6, 2026Niklas Hargus, Andreas Orthey, Marc ToussaintMulti-Robot Motion PlanningMulti-Robot Systems

    Technical University of Berlin, Germany · Robotics Institute Germany (RIG)