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. GMT: Goal-Conditioned Multimodal Transformer for 6-DOF Object Trajectory Synthesis in 3D Scenes

    Mar 18, 2026Huajian Zeng, Abhishek Saroha, Daniel Cremers +1Multimodal TransformerTrajectory Generation

    TU München · MBZUAI · MCML +1

  2. DexViTac: Collecting Human Visuo-Tactile-Kinematic Demonstrations for Contact-Rich Dexterous Manipulation

    Mar 18, 2026Xitong Chen, Yifeng Pan, Min Li +1Robotic Data CollectionContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China · Wuhan Huaweike Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., Wuhan, China

  3. EVA: Aligning Video World Models with Executable Robot Actions via Inverse Dynamics Rewards

    Mar 18, 2026Ruixiang Wang, Qingming Liu, Yueci Deng +3World Models for RoboticsPhysical Consistency in Video Generation

    The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen · DexForce Technology Co., Ltd.

  4. VolumeDP: Modeling Volumetric Representation for Manipulation Policy Learning

    Mar 18, 2026Tianxing Zhou, Feiyang Xue, Zhangchen Ye +3Visuomotor Policy LearningRobotic Manipulation

    1IIIS, Tsinghua University · 2Galaxea AI

  5. Influence of Gripper Design on Human Demonstration Quality for Robot Learning

    Mar 17, 2026Gina L. Georgadarellis, Natalija Beslic, Seonhun Lee +2Healthcare RoboticsRobotics

    Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003 USA · Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003 USA · Center for Personalized Health Monitoring, Institute for Applied Life Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003

  6. CABTO: Context-Aware Behavior Tree Grounding for Robot Manipulation

    Mar 17, 2026Yishuai Cai, Xinglin Chen, Yunxin Mao +6Robotic ControlRobotic Manipulation

    National University of Defense Technology · PsiBot · PKU-Psibot Lab +1

  7. Encoding Predictability and Legibility for Style-Conditioned Diffusion Policy

    Mar 17, 2026Adrien Jacquet Crétides, Mouad Abrini, Hamed Rahimi +1Human-Robot CollaborationDiffusion Policy

    Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique (ISIR), CNRS UMR7222, Inserm ERL U1150, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France

  8. S-VAM: Shortcut Video-Action Model by Self-Distilling Geometric and Semantic Foresight

    Mar 17, 2026Haodong Yan, Zhide Zhong, Jiaguan Zhu +10RoboticsRobotic Manipulation

    The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · Huawei Foundation Model Department

  9. Towards the Vision-Sound-Language-Action Paradigm: The HEAR Framework for Sound-Centric Manipulation

    Mar 17, 2026Chang Nie, Tianchen Deng, Guangming Wang +2Robotic ManipulationVision-Language-Action Models

    School of Automation and Intelligent Sensing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Navigation and Location Based Services, Shanghai 200240, China. · Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 1TN, UK.

  10. Emergent Dexterity via Diverse Resets and Large-Scale Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 16, 2026Patrick Yin, Tyler Westenbroek, Zhengyu Zhang +9Robotic RLRobotic Manipulation

    University of Washington · NVIDIA · Microsoft Research

  11. You've Got a Golden Ticket: Improving Generative Robot Policies With A Single Noise Vector

    Mar 16, 2026Omkar Patil, Ondrej Biza, Thomas Weng +9Robot Policy AdaptationRobotic Manipulation

    Robotics and AI Institute (RAI) · Arizona State University (ASU) · Northeastern University

  12. Towards Generalizable Robotic Manipulation in Dynamic Environments

    Mar 16, 2026Heng Fang, Shangru Li, Shuhan Wang +3Generalization in Robotic ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China · Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd, China

  13. Look Before Acting: Enhancing Vision Foundation Representations for Vision-Language-Action Models

    Mar 16, 2026Yulin Luo, Hao Chen, Zhuangzhe Wu +10Spatial Grounding for VLA ModelsVision-Language-Action Models

    State Key Laboratory of Multimedia Information Processing, School of Computer Science, Peking University · The Chinese University of Hong Kong · Simplexity Robotics

  14. From Passive Observer to Active Critic: Reinforcement Learning Elicits Process Reasoning for Robotic Manipulation

    Mar 16, 2026Yibin Liu, Yaxing Lyu, Daqi Gao +5Robot Task Progress EstimationRobotics

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Northeastern University · The University of Hong Kong +2

  15. HapticVLA: Contact-Rich Manipulation via Vision-Language-Action Model without Inference-Time Tactile Sensing

    Mar 16, 2026Konstantin Gubernatorov, Mikhail Sannikov, Ilya Mikhalchuk +7Robotic ManipulationTactile-Vision-Language-Action Models

    Intelligent Space Robotics Laboratory, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow, Russia.

  16. Coupled Particle Filters for Robust Affordance Estimation

    Mar 16, 2026Patrick Lowin, Vito Mengers, Oliver BrockRobotic Affordance InferenceRobotic Manipulation

    Robotics and Biology Laboratory, Technische Universität Berlin · Robotics Institute Germany · Science of Intelligence (SCIoI), Cluster of Excellence, Berlin, Germany

  17. Master Micro Residual Correction with Adaptive Tactile Fusion and Force-Mixed Control for Contact-Rich Manipulation

    Mar 16, 2026Xingting Li, Yifan Xie, Han Liu +4Robotic ManipulationContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Shenzhen Ubiquitous Data Enabling Key Lab, Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China. · School of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China. · School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639956, Singapore.

  18. VLA-Thinker: Boosting Vision-Language-Action Models through Thinking-with-Image Reasoning

    Mar 15, 2026Chaoyang Wang, Wenrui Bao, Sicheng Gao +5Vision-Language-Action ModelsReasoning for VLA Models

    University of Central Florida · University of Würzburg · University of Southern California +1

  19. A Real-Time Neuro-Symbolic Ethical Governor for Safe Decision Control in Autonomous Robotic Manipulation

    Mar 15, 2026Aueaphum Aueawatthanaphisut, Kuepon AueawatthanaphisutRobot SafetyRobotics

    School of Information, Computer, and Communication Technology, Thammasat University, Pathum Thani, Thailand · Department of Architecture, Faculty of Architecture, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, Thailand

  20. ToMPC: Task-oriented Model Predictive Control via ADMM for Safe Robotic Manipulation

    Mar 14, 2026Xinyu Jia, Wenxin Wang, Jun Yang +2Safe Robot ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117583 · Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen 518057, China · School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798

  21. TransDex: Pre-training Visuo-Tactile Policy with Point Cloud Reconstruction for Dexterous Manipulation of Transparent Objects

    Mar 14, 2026Fengguan Li, Yifan Ma, Chen Qian +2Robotic ManipulationVisuo-Tactile Representation Learning

    University of Science and Technology of China

  22. Building Explicit World Model for Zero-Shot Open-World Object Manipulation

    Mar 14, 2026Xiaotong Li, Gang Chen, Javier Alonso-MoraZero-Shot Robotic ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    Department of Cognitive Robotics (CoR), Delft University of Technology, 2628CD Delft, The Netherlands.

  23. ST-VLA: Enabling 4D-Aware Spatiotemporal Understanding for General Robot Manipulation

    Mar 14, 2026You Wu, Zixuan Chen, Cunxu Ou +9Robotic ManipulationVLMs for Robotics

    School of Computer Science, Nanjing University · School of Intelligence Science and Technology, Nanjing University · School of Electronic Science and Engineering, Nanjing University +2

  24. KoopmanFlow: Spectrally Decoupled Generative Control Policy via Koopman Structural Bias

    Mar 14, 2026Chengsi Yao, Ge Wang, Kai Kang +9Robotic ManipulationFlow-Based Generative Modeling

    ISing AI · Future Network of Intelligence Institution, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen · Guangdong Polytechnic Normal University +1

  25. From Passive Monitoring to Active Defence: Resilient Control of Manipulators Under Cyberattacks

    Mar 13, 2026Gabriele Gualandi, Alessandro V. PapadopoulosCyber-Physical SystemsFalse Data Injection Attacks

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden

  26. Language-Grounded Decoupled Action Representation for Robotic Manipulation

    Mar 13, 2026Wuding Weng, Tongshu Wu, Liucheng Chen +5Robotic ManipulationLanguage-Conditioned Robot Manipulation

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Tongji University, China

  27. PVI: Plug-in Visual Injection for Vision-Language-Action Models

    Mar 13, 2026Zezhou Zhang, Songxin Zhang, Xiao Xiong +8Vision-Language-Action ModelsVLMs for Robotics

    Lionrock AI Lab, China Merchants Group, Hong Kong, China

  28. TacVLA: Contact-Aware Tactile Fusion for Robust Vision-Language-Action Manipulation

    Mar 13, 2026Kaidi Zhang, Heng Zhang, Zhengtong Xu +7Tactile-Vision-Language-Action ModelsContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Kaidi, Heng, Zhengtong, Zhiyuan, Prince, Xiang, Xiaojing, Yuhao, and Yu are with the Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA · Human-Robot Interfaces and Interaction Lab, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy. · Ph.D. program of national interest in Robotics and Intelligent Machines (DRIM) and Università di Genova, Genoa, Italy. +1

  29. Beyond Dense Futures: World Models as Structured Planners for Robotic Manipulation

    Mar 13, 2026Minghao Jin, Mozheng Liao, Mingfei Han +2World Model-Based PlanningRobotic Manipulation

    University of Science and Technology of China · Department of CV, MBZUAI

  30. CoAd: Constant-Time Planning for Continuous Goal Manipulation with Compressed Library and Online Adaptation

    Mar 12, 2026Adil Shiyas, Zhuoyun Zhong, Constantinos ChamzasRobot Motion PlanningMotion Planning

    Department of Robotics Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Worcester, MA 01609, USA