Robotic Manipulation

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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

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

WiXus: A Wheeled-Legged Robot with Wire-Driven Environmental Utilizing to Integrate Mobility and Manipulation
May 20, 2026Shintaro Inoue, Kento Kawaharazuka, Temma Suzuki +2Legged Robotics Robotics
Department of Mechano-Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan
GaussianDream: A Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian World Model for Robotic Manipulation
May 20, 2026Zijian Zhang, Yuqing Jiang, Qian Cheng +6World Models for Robotics Robotic Manipulation
Tuojing Intelligence · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences · Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences +5
Spatially Prompted Visual Trajectory Prediction for Egocentric Manipulation
May 19, 2026Yifan Li, Xinyu Zhou, Yunhao Ge +2Robot Motion Prediction Robotic Manipulation
Michigan State University · NVIDIA Research
Beyond Binary Success: A Diagnostic Meta-Evaluation Framework for Fine-Grained Manipulation
May 19, 2026He-Yang Xu, Pengyuan Zhang, Zongyuan Ge +5VLM Evaluation Robotic Manipulation
Southeast University, China · Monash University, Australia · Xiaomi EV, China +2
Beyond Action Residuals: Real-World Robot Policy Steering via Bottleneck Latent Reinforcement Learning
May 19, 2026Dongjie Yu, Kun Lei, Zhennan Jiang +2Robot Policy Adaptation Reinforcement Learning
School of Computing and Data Science, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR. · Shanghai Qizhi Institute, Shanghai, China. · Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. +2
SWEET: Sparse World Modeling with Image Editing for Embodied Task Execution
May 19, 2026Yiren Song, Yihan Wang, Xiyao Deng +2World Models for Robotics Robotic Manipulation
Show Lab, National University of Singapore · Central South University
COBALT: Crowdsourcing Robot Learning via Cloud-Based Teleoperation with Smartphones
May 18, 2026Ayush Agarwal, Ansh Gandhi, Jeremy A. Collins +6Robot Skill Learning Robotic Data Collection
Georgia Institute of Technology · University of California, Berkeley · New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) +2
Adaptive Human-Robot Collaboration for Masonry Construction Under Material and Assembly Uncertainty
May 18, 2026Jutang Gao, Arash AdelRobotic Construction Robotics
Princeton University · Princeton University, USA
DexHoldem: An Agentic Robotics Benchmark for Dexterous Manipulation in Texas Hold'em
May 18, 2026Feng Chen, Tianzhe Chu, Li Sun +6Dexterous Manipulation AI Agent Evaluation
Not What You Asked For: Typographic Attacks in Household Robot Manipulation
May 18, 2026Ali Iranmanesh, Peng LiuAdversarial Attacks on VLMs Robotic Manipulation
Cyber Security Lab The Pennsylvania State University State College, USA
Key-Gram: Extensible World Knowledge for Embodied Manipulation
May 18, 2026Jingjing Fan, Siyuan Li, Botao Ren +1Memory-Augmented VLMs Language-Conditioned Robot Manipulation
Department of Computer Science and Technology Tsinghua University · Department of Automation Tsinghua University
Dynamic robotic cloth folding with efficient Koopman operator-based model predictive control
May 18, 2026Edoardo Caldarelli, Franco Coltraro, Adrià Colomé +2Model Predictive Control Robotic Manipulation
Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy · Institut de Rob`otica i Inform`atica Industrial, CSIC–UPC, Barcelona, Spain · MaLGa Center, DIB-RIS, Universit`a degli Studi di Genova, Genoa, Italy
TacSE3: Equivariant SE(3) Motion Estimation from Low-Texture Visuotactile Images for In-Gripper Tracking and Compensation
May 18, 2026Zhongyuan Liao, Junzhe Wang, Qingyang Liu +6Tactile Sensing Object Pose Estimation
Hong Kong Center for Construction Robotics, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), China · School of Engineering, Great Bay University, Dongguan, China
A Dexterous and Compliant Gripper With Soft Hydraulic Actuation for Microgravity Manipulation
May 18, 2026William Su, Jordan Kam, Yixiao Wang +1Dexterous Manipulation Space Robotics
Aerospace Engineering Program, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. · Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. · Department of Mechanical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117575.
Optimal Knock-Pick Planning for Tightly Packed Tabletop Blocks With Parallel Grippers
May 18, 2026Hao Lu, Rahul ShomeContact-Rich Manipulation Non-Prehensile Manipulation
School of Computing
From a Single Demonstration to a General Policy for Contact-Rich Manipulation
May 17, 2026Xing Li, Oliver BrockRobot Skill Learning Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation
Robotics and Biology Laboratory, Technische Universität Berlin · Technische Universität Berlin · Science of Intelligence, Research Cluster of Excellence, Berlin +1
Visual Sculpting: Visually-Aligned Planning Representations for Long-Horizon Robot Clay Sculpting
May 17, 2026Peter Schaldenbrand, Jean OhLong-Horizon Robotic Manipulation Deformable Object Manipulation
1The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University · 2Lavoro AI Research
RoboFlow4D: A Lightweight Flow World Model Toward Real-Time Flow-Guided Robotic Manipulation
May 17, 2026Sixu Lin, Junliang Chen, Huaiyuan Xu +8World Models for Robotics Language-Conditioned Robot Manipulation
School of Data Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) · The Hong Kong Polytechnic University · Shenzhen Loop Area Institute +1
HCLM: A Hierarchical Framework for Cooperative Loco-Manipulation with Dual Quadrupeds
May 17, 2026Qixuan Li, Chen Le, Jincheng Yu +1Whole-Body Control Multi-Task Robotic Manipulation
Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, China. · Department of Electronic Engineering, and the Institute for Embodied Intelligence and Robotics, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Task Capability Improvement Algorithm for Collaborative Manipulators
May 17, 2026Keshab Patra, Arpita Sinha, Anirban GuhaRobotic Control Multi-Robot Coordination
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India · Center for Systems and Control, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Generalizable and Actionable Parts Pose Estimation with Symmetry Annotation-Free Learning Strategy
May 16, 2026Wenxiao Chen, Xueyu Yuan, Liu Liu +2Symmetry-Aware Object Pose Estimation Object Pose Estimation
Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, Anhui, China · University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui, China.
VLAMotor: Test-Guided Enhancement of Vision-Language-Action Models via Agent-BasedData Synthesis
May 16, 2026Zeqin Liao, Peifan Ren, Zixu Gao +6VLM Adaptation Synthetic Data Generation for Robotics
School of computing and data science, Nanyang Technological University · School of Software Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, China and GuangDong Engineering Technology Research Center of Blockchain, China · Northwest A&F University
Nori Bot: A Sub-$1,000 Floor-to-Counter Mobile Manipulator
May 15, 2026Antonio Li, Sungjoon Park, Wen Ni ChewRobotic Control Mobile Manipulation
Department of Computer Science, Columbia University
Offline Semantic Guidance for Efficient Vision-Language-Action Policy Distillation
May 15, 2026Jin Shi, Brady Zhang, Yishun LuVLM Distillation Efficient VLA Model Inference
Department of Mechanical Engineering University College London London, United Kingdom · Department of Engineering Science University of Oxford Oxford, United Kingdom
OHP-RL: Online Human Preference as Guidance in Reinforcement Learning for Robot Manipulation
May 15, 2026Yunyang Mo, Jian Li, Qiwei Wu +2Robotic RL Human-in-the-Loop AI
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)
UAM: A Dual-Stream Perspective on Forgetting in VLA Training
May 15, 2026Jianke Zhang, Yuanfei Luo, Yucheng Hu +6Robotic Manipulation Vision-Language-Action Models
Tsinghua University · ByteDance Seed
Learning Dynamic Pick-and-Place for a Legged Manipulator
May 15, 2026Moonkyu Jung, Jiseong Lee, Zhengmao He +8Mobile Manipulation Whole-Body Control
Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Lab, KAIST, Daejeon, South Korea · Thrust of Robotics and Autonomous Systems, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, China
SkiP: When to Skip and When to Refine for Efficient Robot Manipulation
May 15, 2026Mingtong Dai, Guanqi Peng, Yongjie Bai +5Robot Skill Learning Contact-Rich Robotic Manipulation
Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences · Southern University of Science and Technology · Peng Cheng Laboratory +2
Diffusion Policy for Coordinated Control of a Nonholonomic Mobile Base and Dual Arms in Door Opening and Passing
May 14, 2026Shangqun Yu, Matthew En, Daniel Wu +4Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation Mobile Manipulation
Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst · alpha-z
Hand-in-the-Loop: Improving VLA Policies for Dexterous Manipulation via Seamless Hand-Arm Intervention
May 14, 2026Zhuohang Li, Liqun Huang, Wei Xu +5Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulation Bimanual Robotic Manipulation
State Key Laboratory of Mechanical System and Vibration, School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Shanghai Key Laboratory of Intelligent Robotics, Meta Robotics Institute, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China · ByteDance Seed +1

May 20, 2026J/K move · Enter open · S save

WiXus: A Wheeled-Legged Robot with Wire-Driven Environmental Utilizing to Integrate Mobility and Manipulation

Shintaro Inoue, Kento Kawaharazuka, Temma Suzuki, Sota Yuzaki+1

Department of Mechano-Informatics, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan

Legged Robotics Robotics Robotic Tool Use Robotic Manipulation Robot Locomotion Tendon-Driven Actuation

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Wheeled-legged robots, which have wheels at their feet and achieve high mobility by coordinating wheel drive and leg drive, have been developed. These robots have been developed purely as platforms specialized for locomotion. Therefore, they do not have a means to repurpose their legs for roles other than locomotion, such as object manipulation or tool utilization. In this paper, we address the problem of how to draw out the potential task-execution capability of the legs by freeing them from the roles of locomotion through external body support. To this end, we propose and develop a new robot, WiXus, which fuses a wheeled-legged mechanism with a wire-driven mechanism that utilizes the external environment. The developed WiXus demonstrates not only planar locomotion with wheeled-legged drive, but also three-dimensional mobility such as cliff climbing by coordinating wire-driven and wheeled-legged actuation. Furthermore, by suspending the body with wire-driven actuation, WiXus successfully repurpose its legs as arms to perform object manipulation, (e.g., rescuing a dog (stuffed animal)), and tool utilization (e.g., harvesting an apple (mockup) with loppers). This study demonstrates that the approach of utilizing the environment with wire-driven actuation is a new design principle that extends the operational domain of wheeled-legged robots.