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. MS-MEM: Multi-Skill Manipulation-Enhanced Mapping via Uncertainty- and Disturbance-Aware Action Selection

    Sep 2, 2026Yitian Shi, Jesper Mücke, Nils Dengler +3Robotic Object PushingSemantic Mapping

    Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany · University of Bonn, Germany · Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany +1

  2. World-Coherent Decoding: Self-Verifying Test-Time Planning for World Action Models

    Sep 2, 2026Chuhan Zhang, Seiji Ito, Kenta Hoshino +2World Action ModelsRobotic Manipulation

    Department of Computer Science Institute of Science Tokyo · DENSO IT Lab, Japan · National Institute of Informatics, Japan

  3. Real-Time Dynamics-Based Torque-Sampling MPPI for Compliant and Force Aware Manipulation

    Sep 2, 2026Euncheol Im, Taehyun Kim, Yonghwan Oh +2Robotic ControlModel Predictive Control

    The Center for Humanoid Research, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), 02792 Seoul, South Korea · The School of Electrical Engineering, Korea University, 02841 Seoul, South Korea

  4. One Demonstration, Many Objects: Generalizing Manipulation via Local Contact Geometry

    Sep 1, 2026Satvik Sharma, Samrat Sahoo, Huang Huang +4Contact-Rich Robotic ManipulationSim-to-Real Transfer

    Stanford University

  5. A System for Fast, Resilient, and Adaptable Loco-Manipulation Behaviors on Humanoid Robots

    Sep 1, 2026Duncan Calvert, Luigi Penco, Dexton Anderson +4Affordance-Based Robotic ManipulationHumanoid Loco-Manipulation

    Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, 40 S Alcaniz St, Pensacola, FL 32502, USA. · University of West Florida, 11000 University Pkwy, Pensacola, FL 32514, USA.

  6. Does Imitation Learning Preserve Temporal Robustness in Dexterous Manipulation? An Expert-Learner Comparison Across Task Execution Speeds

    Sep 1, 2026Clinton Enwerem, John S. Baras, Calin BeltaContact-Rich Robotic ManipulationRobotic Policy Evaluation

    Institute for Systems Research University of Maryland College Park, MD, U.S.A.

  7. Knowing When to Stop: Adaptive Action Chunking via Internal Cross-Attention Dynamics in VLAs

    Sep 1, 2026Runze Xu, Xiaolong Shan, Shuang Dai +2Efficient VLA Model InferenceRobotic Manipulation

    Tsinghua University

  8. Beyond Object Selection:Markerless Gaze-based Robot Placement at Arbitrary Positions

    Aug 31, 2026Yuzhi Lai, William Marx, Shenghai Yuan +3Robotic Manipulation

    University of Tuebingen, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz, 72074 Germany · University of Tuebingen · Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798 +1

  9. IMPACT: Attention Is the Interaction Map for Scalable Interaction-Aware World Model Training

    Aug 31, 2026Rongze Tang, Jianjie Fang, Zhaolu Wang +8World Model LearningAction-Conditioned World Models

    University of Science and Technology of China · 2Zhongguancun Academy · 3Tsinghua University +1

  10. Autonomously Acquiring Robot Manipulation Skills with Language-Driven Quality-Diversity

    Aug 31, 2026Émiland Garrabé, Mahdi Khoramshahi, Stéphane DoncieuxRobot Policy LearningRobot Skill Learning

    ISIR, Sorbonne Universit´e, France

  11. Zeva: In-Context Causal Learning for Generalizable Embodied Manipulation

    Aug 31, 2026Fu Chen, Xin Ding, Bingjia Huang +8Robot Policy LearningICL for Robotics

    Institute for AI Industry Research (AIR), Tsinghua University

  12. Temporal Forcing: 4D Representation Alignment for Vision-Language-Action Models

    Aug 31, 2026Xingyu Ding, Yuzhong Zhao, Chunhai Zhao +3Representation LearningTemporal Representation Learning

    Nanjing University, Nanjing, China · Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

  13. CometVLA: Co-Training on an Embodied Data Pyramid towards Physical Understanding

    Aug 31, 2026Hanwen Wan, Dafeng Chi, Linbo Zhai +6Language-Conditioned Robot ManipulationEmbodied QA

    1JD Explore Academy, China. · 5South China University of Technology, China. · School of Science and Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China. +3

  14. Motus2: A Self-Evolving General World Model for Dexterous Manipulation

    Aug 31, 2026Hongzhe Bi, Zihao Zhou, Yihang Tang +16World Models for RoboticsAction-Conditioned World Models

    GensPI · Tsinghua University

  15. Sampling-based Certified Planning with Graphs of Convex Sets

    Aug 30, 2026Peng Xie, Amr AlanwarConstrained Motion PlanningRobotic Manipulation

    TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology, Department of Computer Engineering, Technical University of Munich, 74076 Heilbronn, Germany

  16. AGM: Achievement-Grounded Memory for Closed-Loop Agents with Frozen VLA Policies

    Aug 30, 2026Hongbo Gao, Zeyu Ni, Xin Wen +4Memory-Augmented VLMsRobotic Manipulation

    Harbin Institute of Technology · The University of Sydney · StellarEdge AI

  17. Blind Dexterity: Whole-Body Humanoid Manipulation via Pure Proprioception

    Aug 30, 2026Aditya Bhatt, Oleg Kaidanov, Puze Liu +1Whole-Body Robotic ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    Intelligent Autonomous Systems Lab, TU Darmstadt · German Research Center for AI (DFKI) · Tongji University, Shanghai Research Institute for Autonomous Intelligent Systems +1

  18. Bridging Semantics and Physics with Constrained LLMs for Safe and Trustworthy Robotic Manipulation

    Aug 29, 2026Wenhao Hong, Lan Wei, Dandan ZhangSafe Robot ManipulationLanguage-Conditioned Robot Manipulation

    Imperial College London, London, UK

  19. AnyWorld: Factorized Egocentric World Models for Cross-Embodiment Generalization

    Aug 29, 2026Cheng Chen, Jerry Bai, Jiacheng Wei +11Robot Skill LearningWorld Models for Robotics

    Nanyang Technological University · XPENG Robotics · Zhejiang University +2

  20. Agri-Sim: Agricultural Simulation Platform for Embodied Intelligence Evaluation in Greenhouse Robotics

    Aug 29, 2026Shuhan Shi, Zhenfeng Xue, Minghao Mei +3Robotic HarvestingRobotics Simulation

    School of Mechatronic Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China · Sino-European School of Technology of Shanghai University, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China · School of Future Technology (Institute of Artificial Intelligence), Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China

  21. Aero Hand Open: A Simulation-Ready Tendon-Driven Hand for Dexterous Manipulation Learning

    Aug 28, 2026Nan Wang, Mohit Yadav, Jonathan Wulff +5Robotic Hand DesignRobotics Simulation

    Chestnut Robotics

  22. Contact-Guided Exploration for Non-Prehensile Locomanipulation with Multi-Critic RL

    Aug 28, 2026Simone Tolomei, Mayank Mittal, Franco Angelini +3Non-Prehensile Robotic ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    Centro di Ricerca E. Piaggio, Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, Universit`a di Pisa, Italy · ETH Zürich, Switzerland · NVIDIA

  23. Deciding If, When, and Where to Replan for Robust Manipulation

    Aug 28, 2026Narendhiran Vijayakumar, Puru Ojha, Nav Singhal +2Large Language Model-Based Robot PlanningRobotic Manipulation

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

  24. PHR-VLA: Planning Horizon Reasoning for Vision-Language-Action Models

    Aug 27, 2026Davood Soleymanzadeh, Kaidi Zhang, Zhiyuan Zhang +4Vision-Language-Action ModelsReasoning for VLA Models

    J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA · Department of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA · Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843 USA

  25. Tensegrity Continuum Robots Enable Task-Adaptive Morphologies for Cooperative Behaviors

    Aug 27, 2026Mahmud Hasan Saikot, Sydney Spiegel, Sudheera Akalanka Kariyawasam +3Tensegrity RoboticsRobotics

    Adaptive Robotics Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA

  26. Planning a Shared Modular Fixture Layout Across Robotic Disassembly Stages

    Aug 27, 2026Haohui Pan, Takuya Kiyokawa, Kensuke HaradaRobotic Manipulation

    Department of Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering Science, The University of Osaka, 1-3 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka, Japan · Industrial Cyber-physical Systems Research Center, The National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), 2-3-26 Aomi, Koto-ku, Tokyo, Japan

  27. GRAFT: Grounded and Efficient Online Reinforcement Adaptation for Fine-Grained Robot Manipulation

    Aug 27, 2026Yibo Qiu, Haoliang Ye, Shu'ang Sun +3Visual Grounding for RoboticsRL for Robotics

    Suzhou Institute for Advanced Research, University of Science and Technology of China, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China, and also with the School of Biomedical Engineering, Division of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China

  28. Relaxation-Aware Multimodal Sensing of Soft Gripper Driven by Structure-Perception-Learning

    Aug 27, 2026Yanzhe Wang, Hao Wu, Ziyi Zheng +1Robotic GraspingSoft Robotics

    Grasp Lab, School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University · Torch Kernel Co., Ltd.

  29. Beyond Relative Geometry: Metric-Aware Geometry Perception for Robotics

    Aug 27, 2026Fengjun Zhong, Congjia Chen, Zhaoxu Liu +7Robotic Perception3D Reconstruction

    Beihang University · XiaoyuBot

  30. Constraint-Aware Physics-Informed Neural Networks for Static Shape Estimation of Co-Manipulative Continuum Robots

    Aug 26, 2026Rana Danesh, Pari Qarehdaghi, Farrokh Janabi-SharifiContinuum Robot Shape EstimationDeformable Shape Reconstruction