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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1,685 papers341 papers in the last four weeks, up 29% on the four weeks before. 2.0% of all new papers.

  1. CORE: Common Outcome Regularities from Action-Free Visual Demonstrations for Robot Manipulation

    Jun 28, 2026Juyi Sheng, Jincheng Li, Mingxin Tan +1Robotic ManipulationGoal-Conditioned RL

    1Peking University, Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen, China

  2. LAMP: Long-Horizon Adaptive Manipulation Planning for Multi-Robot Collaboration in Cluttered Space

    Jun 28, 2026Shuai Zhou, Yorai Shaoul, Jiaoyang LiLong-Horizon Robotic ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

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

  3. Occlusion-Robust Multi-Object Decoupling for Physics-Based Robotic Interaction

    Jun 28, 2026Xin Dong, Lihan Zhang, Tianru Dai +23D ReconstructionSparse-View 3D Reconstruction

    1Pengcheng Laboratory · 2Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University

  4. You Only Touch Once: 6-DoF Object Pose Estimation from Single Tactile Contact

    Jun 27, 2026Pengfei Ye, Yuxiang Ma, Haonan Chen +5Object Pose EstimationRobotic Manipulation

    MIT CSAIL · Harvard University · University of Cambridge

  5. Human2Any: Human-to-Robot Transfer via Constraint-Aware Compositional Planning

    Jun 27, 2026Shuo Cheng, Chuye Zhang, Alfred Cueva +3Robot Skill LearningGeneralization in Robotic Manipulation

    Georgia Institute of Technology · NVIDIA Corporation

  6. Robotic Arm-Based Spectral Sensing for Strawberry Positioning and Non-Destructive Sweetness Measurement

    Jun 26, 2026Yi Yang, Mark Cardamis, Wen HuHand-Eye CalibrationRobotic Manipulation

  7. DexCompose: Reusing Dexterous Policies for Multi-Task Manipulation with a Single Hand

    Jun 26, 2026Dihong Huang, Zhenyu Wei, Zhuxiu Xu +3Dexterous ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  8. PhysisForcing: Physics Reinforced World Simulator for Robotic Manipulation

    Jun 26, 2026Peiwen Zhang, Yufan Deng, Shangkun Sun +11Physical Consistency in Video GenerationVideo Diffusion Models

    Peking University, NVIDIA

  9. Drop-Then-Recovery: How Redundant Are Vision-Language-Action Models?

    Jun 26, 2026Guoheng Sun, Kaixi Feng, Shwai He +8Model CompressionEfficient VLA Models

    University of Maryland, College Park · 2Cisco Research

  10. Direct Action-Head Injection of A Grounded 3D Point Unlocks Spatial and Task Generalization

    Jun 26, 2026Shiang-Feng Tsai, Jin-Cheng Jhang, Yen-Ling Tai +5Vision-Language-Action ModelsGeneralization in Robotic Manipulation

    National Tsing Hua University · National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University

  11. Learning to Throw: Agile and Accurate Cable-Suspended Payload Delivery with a Quadrotor

    Jun 25, 2026Yifan Zhai, Elia Raimondi, Yunfan Ren +4RL for RoboticsRobotics Simulation

    Robotics and Perception Group, Department of Informatics, University of Zurich, Switzerland

  12. Support-Constrained RL Enables Real-World Policy Improvement without Real-World Experience

    Jun 25, 2026Raymond Yu, William Huey, Mustafa Mukadam +2RL for RoboticsRobot Policy Adaptation

    University of Washington · Amazon FAR

  13. VibeAct: Vibration to Actions for Contact-Rich Reactive Robot Dexterity

    Jun 25, 2026Yuemin Mao, Uksang Yoo, Jean Oh +2Tactile SensingContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    1Carnegie Mellon University · 2Bosch Center for Artificial Intelligence

  14. LA4VLA: Learning to Act without Seeing via Language-Action Pretraining

    Jun 25, 2026Tao Lin, Yuxin Du, Yiran Mao +13Language Model PretrainingVisuomotor Policy Learning

    School of AI, Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Alibaba Group · KAUST +1

  15. E-TTS: A New Embodied Test-Time Scaling Framework for Robotic Manipulation

    Jun 25, 2026Wen Ye, Peiyan Li, Tingyu Yuan +7Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationTest-Time Scaling

    New Laboratory of Pattern Recognition (NLPR), Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · Foundation Model Research Center, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China +1

  16. RelAfford6D: Relational 6D Affordance Graphs for Constraint-Driven Robotic Manipulation

    Jun 25, 2026Guodong Zhang, Qichen He, Wenyuan Xie +6Motion PlanningConstrained Motion Planning

    School of Computer Science, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, P. R. China

  17. SSI-Policy: Learning Structured Scene Interfaces for Vision-Language Robotic Manipulation

    Jun 25, 2026Kaijun Wang, Zikai Ouyang, Xuping Wu +6Robot Skill LearningLanguage-Conditioned Robot Manipulation

    Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China · Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen 518000, China · The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China +1

  18. RoboNav-Arm: Agentic AI-Driven Navigation and Obstacle Avoidance for Robotic Manipulator in Cluttered Environments

    Jun 25, 2026Aachal Sharma, Narendra Kumar DharRoboticsRobotic Manipulation

    Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, Himachal Pradesh 175005, India.

  19. WatchAct: A Benchmark for Behavior-Grounded Robot Manipulation

    Jun 24, 2026Baiqi Li, Ce Zhang, Yu Fang +4Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationLanguage-Conditioned Robot Manipulation

    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  20. Play2Perfect: What Matters in Dexterous Play Pretraining for Precise Assembly?

    Jun 24, 2026Tyler Ga Wei Lum, Kushal Kedia, C. Karen Liu +1RL for RoboticsRobot Skill Learning

    Stanford University · Cornell University

  21. CoStream: Composing Simple Behaviors for Generalizable Complex Manipulation

    Jun 24, 2026Haonan Chen, Yuxiang Ma, Stephen Tian +7Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Harvard University · Stanford University · Massachusetts Institute of Technology +1

  22. Learning Action Priors for Cross-embodiment Robot Manipulation

    Jun 24, 2026Dong Jing, Tianqi Zhang, Jiaqi Liu +5Cross-Embodiment Robot LearningRobotic Manipulation

    Renmin University of China · University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill · University of Toronto +1

  23. ForceBand: Learning Forceful Manipulation with sEMG

    Jun 24, 2026Botao He, Zhi Wang, Linna Kuang +8Robot Skill LearningContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Amazon FAR · University of Maryland · Johns Hopkins University

  24. TaskNPoint: How to Teach Your Humanoid to Hit a Backhand in Minutes

    Jun 24, 2026Blake Werner, Ilona Demler, Pietro Perona +1RL for RoboticsRobot Skill Learning

    California Institute of Technology

  25. Morphology-Specific Closed-Loop Control of Logarithmic-Spiral Continuum Arms via Online Jacobian Error Compensation

    Jun 24, 2026Partha Datta, Yi Jin, Wei Lin +1Robotic ControlRobot Trajectory Tracking

    Laboratory for Soft Machines and Electronics, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA · Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA · Laboratory for Soft Machines and Electronics, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA +3

  26. LiMoDE: Rethinking Lifelong Robot Manipulation from a Mixture-of-Dynamic-Experts Perspective

    Jun 24, 2026Zhihao Gu, Lin WangRobot Policy LearningContinual Robot Learning

    School of EEE, Nanyang Technological University

  27. Stage-Aware and Roughness-Constrained Diffusion Policy for Multi-Stage Robotic Polishing

    Jun 24, 2026Shuai Ke, Jiexin Zhang, Huan Zhao +7Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China · Shanghai Spaceflight Precision Machinery Institute, Shanghai, 201600, China

  28. AISPO: Enhancing Depth Reliability for Robotic Manipulation of Non-Lambertian Objects via Affine-Invariant Shape Prior

    Jun 24, 2026Zhiming Chen, Linfang Zheng, Kun Zhang +4Depth CompletionRobotic Manipulation

    The Hong Kong University of Science & Technology · LimX Dynamics · The University of Hong Kong +2

  29. GRAFT: Graph-Based Affordance Transfer via Part Correspondence

    Jun 23, 2026Mengying Lin, Utkarsh Mishra, Ajay Mandlekar +1Zero-Shot Robotic ManipulationGeneralization in Robotic Manipulation

    Georgia Institute of Technology · NVIDIA

  30. RigPI: Dynamic Parameter Identification of Rigid Body via VLM-Seeded Differentiable Simulation

    Jun 23, 2026Xincheng He, Rongrong Zhang, Wei Jiang +1Robot Dynamics IdentificationRobotic Manipulation

    Way Robotics