Robotic RL

RL: Reinforcement Learning

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Overview

Robotic reinforcement learning studies how robots can learn actions from rewards and experience in tasks such as locomotion, navigation, and contact-rich manipulation. Common approaches include model-free methods such as PPO and SAC, hierarchical and model-based control, and reinforcement-learning fine-tuning of policies pretrained from demonstrations or large datasets. Simulation and parallel training make it possible to explore many behaviors, while domain randomization, system identification, and real-robot fine-tuning help transfer policies to hardware. A central challenge is achieving sample-efficient learning without sacrificing safety, robustness, or performance when sensors, dynamics, and task conditions differ from training.

Latest papers

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307 papers49 papers in the last four weeks, up 14% on the four weeks before. 0.3% of all new papers.

  1. ScoRe-Flow: Complete Distributional Control via Score-Based Reinforcement Learning for Flow Matching

    Apr 13, 2026Xiaotian Qiu, Lukai Chen, Jinhao Li +3RL for Flow Matching ModelsFlow-Based Policy Learning

    Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China · Shanghai Innovation Institute · Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China +1

  2. MoRI: Mixture of RL and IL Experts for Long-Horizon Manipulation Tasks

    Apr 11, 2026Yaohang Xu, Lianjie Ma, Gewei Zuo +3Robotic RLLong-Horizon Robotic Manipulation

    School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. · DRAGON Lab, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. · School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.

  3. ViVa: A Video-Generative Value Model for Robot Reinforcement Learning

    Apr 9, 2026Jindi Lv, Hao Li, Jie Li +11Robotic RL

    GigaAI · Sichuan University · Tsinghua University

  4. Sustainable Transfer Learning for Adaptive Robot Skills

    Apr 8, 2026Khalil Abuibaid, Vinit Hegiste, Nigora Gafur +2Robot Policy AdaptationCross-Embodiment Robot Learning

    Chair of Machine Tools and Control System, RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany · Innovative Factory Systems, German Institute of Artificial Intelligence, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany · Chair of Machine Tools and Control Systems, RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau, 67663 Kaiserslautern, Germany

  5. FlashSAC: Fast and Stable Off-Policy Reinforcement Learning for High-Dimensional Robot Control

    Apr 6, 2026Donghu Kim, Youngdo Lee, Minho Park +10Off-Policy RLRobotic RL

    Holiday Robotics · KAIST · KRAFTON +5

  6. Drift-Based Policy Optimization: Native One-Step Policy Learning for Online Robot Control

    Apr 4, 2026Yuxuan Gao, Yedong Shen, Shiqi Zhang +6Diffusion PolicyRobotic RL

    University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China. · LYNSENSE, Shanghai, China. · iFLYTEK, Hefei 230088, China.

  7. Tune to Learn: How Controller Gains Shape Robot Policy Learning

    Apr 2, 2026Antonia Bronars, Younghyo Park, Pulkit AgrawalRobot Policy LearningRobotic Control

    MIT · MIT Improbable AI Lab

  8. Posterior Optimization with Clipped Objective for Bridging Efficiency and Stability in Generative Policy Learning

    Apr 2, 2026Yuhui Chen, Haoran Li, Zhennan Jiang +4Policy OptimizationRobotic RL

    Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China · CFCS, School of Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing 100871

  9. DreamControl-v2: Simpler and Scalable Autonomous Humanoid Skills via Trainable Guided Diffusion Priors

    Mar 31, 2026Sudarshan Harithas, Sangkyung Kwak, Pushkal Katara +6Robot Skill LearningHumanoid Robot Control

    General Robotics, USA · Brown University, USA · University of California, Berkeley, USA

  10. Generalizable Dense Reward for Long-Horizon Robotic Tasks

    Mar 31, 2026Silong Yong, Stephen Sheng, Carl Qi +6Reinforcement LearningLong-Horizon Robotic Manipulation

    Carnegie Mellon University · Amazon Robotics · UT Austin

  11. Tac2Real: Reliable and GPU Visuotactile Simulation for Online Reinforcement Learning and Zero-Shot Real-World Deployment

    Mar 30, 2026Ningyu Yan, Shuai Wang, Xing Shen +4Robotics SimulationSim-to-Real Transfer

    Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. · Shanghai Jiao Tong University +1

  12. Agent-Driven Autonomous Reinforcement Learning Research: Iterative Policy Improvement for Quadruped Locomotion

    Mar 28, 2026Nimesh Khandelwal, Shakti S. GuptaReinforcement LearningRobotic RL

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India

  13. D-SPEAR: Dual-Stream Prioritized Experience Adaptive Replay for Stable Reinforcement Learning in Robotic Manipulation

    Mar 28, 2026Yu Zhang, Karl MasonPrioritized Experience ReplayReinforcement Learning

    School of Computer Science University of Galway Galway, Ireland

  14. Where-to-Learn: Analytical Policy Gradient Directed Exploration for On-Policy Robotic Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 28, 2026Leixin Chang, Xinchen Yao, Ben Liu +2RL ExplorationRobotic RL

  15. Modernising Reinforcement Learning-Based Navigation for Embodied Semantic Scene Graph Generation

    Mar 26, 2026Roman Küble, Marco Hüller, Mrunmai Phatak +2Robotic RLScene Graph Generation

    Organic Computing Group · University of Augsburg, Am Technologiezentrum 8, Augsburg, Germany · Machine Learning and Computer Vision Group

  16. PA2D-MORL: Pareto Ascent Directional Decomposition based Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 20, 2026Tianmeng Hu, Biao LuoMulti-Objective Reinforcement LearningRobotic RL

    Central South University

  17. Shielded Reinforcement Learning Under Dynamic Temporal Logic Constraints

    Mar 17, 2026Sadık Bera Yüksel, Ali Tevfik Buyukkocak, Derya AksarayConstrained RLReinforcement Learning

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University.

  18. When Should a Robot Think? Resource-Aware Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning for Embodied Robotic Decision-Making

    Mar 17, 2026Jun Liu, Pu Zhao, Zhenglun Kong +12Embodied AIEmbodied Reasoning

    Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University · Northeastern University · Harvard University +9

  19. Agile Interception of a Flying Target using Competitive Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 17, 2026Timothée Gavin, Simon Lacroix, Murat BronzRobotic RL

    ENAC-LAB, LAAS-RIS · IAS, Thales LAS, Rungis, France · LAAS-RIS +3

  20. Large Reward Models: Generalizable Online Robot Reward Generation with Vision-Language Models

    Mar 17, 2026Yanru Wu, Weiduo Yuan, Esteban Martinez Licon +4Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationRobot Skill Learning

    USC Physical Superintelligence Lab

  21. ExpertGen: Scalable Sim-to-Real Expert Policy Learning from Imperfect Behavior Priors

    Mar 16, 2026Zifan Xu, Ran Gong, Maria Vittoria Minniti +10Long-Horizon Robotic ManipulationRobot Skill Learning

    Robotics and AI Institute · University of Texas at Austin · Sony AI

  22. 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

  23. S2Act: Simple Spiking Actor

    Mar 16, 2026Ugur Akcal, Seung Hyun Kim, Mikihisa Yuasa +6Spiking Neural NetworksRobotic RL

    Aerospace Engineering · Computer Science · Coordinated Science Laboratory +4

  24. FastDSAC: Unlocking the Potential of Maximum Entropy RL in High-Dimensional Humanoid Control

    Mar 13, 2026Jun Xue, Junze Wang, Shanze Wang +3Maximum Entropy RLRobotic RL

    College of Information Science and Technology, Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, China · School of Computer Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China · College of Computer Science and Technology, China University of Petroleum(East China), Qingdao, China

  25. NFPO: Stabilized Policy Optimization of Normalizing Flow for Robotic Policy Learning

    Mar 12, 2026Diyuan Shi, Yiqi Tang, Zifeng Zhuang +1RL for RoboticsRobotic RL

    Zhejiang University · Westlake University

  26. Learning Adaptive Force Control for Contact-Rich Sample Scraping with Heterogeneous Materials

    Mar 11, 2026Cenk Cetin, Shreyas Pouli, Gabriella PizzutoContact-Rich Robotic ManipulationForce-Controlled Robotic Manipulation

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

  27. ASTER: Attitude-aware Suspended-payload Quadrotor Traversal via Efficient Reinforcement Learning

    Mar 11, 2026Dongcheng Cao, Jin Zhou, Shuo LiQuadrotor ControlRobotic RL

    College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.

  28. InterReal: A Unified Physics-Based Imitation Framework for Learning Human-Object Interaction Skills

    Mar 8, 2026Dayang Liang, Yuhang Lin, Xinzhe Liu +3Imitation LearningRobot Imitation Learning

    Xiamen University · Zhejiang University · ShanghaiTech University +1

  29. Learning From Failures: Efficient Reinforcement Learning Control with Episodic Memory

    Mar 7, 2026Chenyang MiaoReinforcement LearningRL Control

    Xi’an Jiaotong University

  30. Adaptive Policy Switching of Two-Wheeled Differential Robots for Traversing over Diverse Terrains

    Mar 5, 2026Haruki Izawa, Takeshi Takai, Shingo Kitano +2Terrain-Aware Robot LocomotionRobot Policy Adaptation

    Graduate School of Information Science, University of Hyogo, Hyogo, Japan · Takenaka Research & Development Institute, Takenaka Corporation, Chiba, Japan