Research Papers

Plain-English summaries of the latest robotics research — humanoid robots, quadrupeds, industrial automation, and AI.
499 papers
HEFT Enables Full-Size Humanoid Robots to Lift 24 kg During Teleoperation
HumanoidJul 6

HEFT Enables Full-Size Humanoid Robots to Lift 24 kg During Teleoperation

HEFT enables a full-size humanoid to carry 24 kg while being teleoperated via VR, using a motion-adaptive payload curriculum and privileged training.

Chenxin Liu, Qingzhou Lu, Guangxiao Yang, Xuanyang Shi +3

ACID Framework Boosts Robotic Planning With Action Consistency Check
AIJul 5

ACID Framework Boosts Robotic Planning With Action Consistency Check

A new decision-time planning framework called ACID adds a simple action consistency check to world model–based planning, improving control quality across rig…

Gawon Seo, Dongwon Kim, Suha Kwak

LIME Teaches Robots Where to Look Based on Language Intent
AIJul 5

LIME Teaches Robots Where to Look Based on Language Intent

Researchers have built LIME, an AI model that predicts where a camera should aim next based on natural-language instructions. By learning human-like camera m…

Boyang Sun, Jiajie Li, Yung-Hsu Yang +6

WorldSample Boosts Real Robot Learning with World Model Data Augmentation
AIJul 5

WorldSample Boosts Real Robot Learning with World Model Data Augmentation

Yuquan Xue, Le Xu, Zeyi Liu +5

Task-Agnostic Pretraining: Teaching Robots to Move Before Teaching Tasks
AIJul 4

Task-Agnostic Pretraining: Teaching Robots to Move Before Teaching Tasks

Junhao Shi, Siyin Wang, Xiaopeng Yu +3

Differentiable Simulation Trains Drones to Intercept Intruders Using Only Direction
RoboticsJul 4

Differentiable Simulation Trains Drones to Intercept Intruders Using Only Direction

Researchers at RISC Lab have developed a quadrotor interception policy that tracks and catches an intruder drone using only the direction to the target—no di…

Michael Anoruo, Xiaoyu Tian, Abhishek Rathod +5

QuadRocket Testbed Uses a Drone to Control a Rocket-Like Flying Pendulum
dronesJul 4

QuadRocket Testbed Uses a Drone to Control a Rocket-Like Flying Pendulum

QuadRocket uses a quadrotor attached via universal joint to control a rocket-like body, enabling low-cost indoor thrust-vector control experiments.

Pedro Santos, Joel Reis, Paulo Oliveira +1

Controllable Traffic Agents Learn Steering Behaviors From Latent Variables
AIJul 3

Controllable Traffic Agents Learn Steering Behaviors From Latent Variables

Juanwu Lu, Junyu Zhu, Ziran Wang

Embodied.cpp Enables Efficient C++ Inference for Embodied AI on Heterogeneous Robots
RoboticsJul 3

Embodied.cpp Enables Efficient C++ Inference for Embodied AI on Heterogeneous Robots

Ling Xu, Chuyu Han, Borui Li +6

Visual-Tactile World Action Model for Contact-Rich Manipulation
RoboticsJul 3

Visual-Tactile World Action Model for Contact-Rich Manipulation

VT-WAM couples tactile deformation dynamics with action prediction using joint visual-tactile-action flow matching for contact-rich manipulation

Shuai Tian, Yupeng Zheng, Yuhang Zheng +7

Sensorless Teleoperation Uses Inverse Dynamics for Transparent Control
RoboticsJul 2

Sensorless Teleoperation Uses Inverse Dynamics for Transparent Control

A new control architecture for human-scale bilateral teleoperation eliminates force/torque sensors by using inverse dynamics modeling to estimate external fo…

Amir Noohian, Dylan Miller, Justin Valentine +2

GPU-Parallel Linearization Error Bounds for Real-Time Robust Optimal Control of Nonlinear and Neural Network Dynamics
AIJul 2

GPU-Parallel Linearization Error Bounds for Real-Time Robust Optimal Control of Nonlinear and Neural Network Dynamics

Jeffrey Fang, Keyi Shen, Anutam Srinivasan +1

FurnitureVLA: Teaching Robots to Assemble IKEA Furniture Using Vision-Language-Action Models
AIJul 2

FurnitureVLA: Teaching Robots to Assemble IKEA Furniture Using Vision-Language-Action Models

Chenyang Ma, Yue Yang, Radu Corcodel +4

PrimeU: Humanoid Robot That Learns Tasks by Watching Human Videos
HumanoidJul 1

PrimeU: Humanoid Robot That Learns Tasks by Watching Human Videos

Human-aligned humanoid PrimeU learns manipulation tasks from ordinary human videos using PhysDex, reducing robot data needs by orders of magnitude.

Xiaopeng Lin, Ruoqi Yang, Shijie Lian +14

Freeform Preferences Help Robots Learn From Human Feedback Without Rigid Ratings
AIJul 1

Freeform Preferences Help Robots Learn From Human Feedback Without Rigid Ratings

Learning robot policies from human preferences traditionally forces annotators to give a single binary score comparing two trajectories, collapsing complex j…

Marcel Torne, Anubha Mahajan, Abhijnya Bhat +1

Disentangled Video World Model Speeds Robotic Planning Without Sacrificing Quality
RoboticsJul 1

Disentangled Video World Model Speeds Robotic Planning Without Sacrificing Quality

Ziyu Shan, Zhenyu Wu, Xiaofeng Wang +2

Sequential Planning via Anchored Robotic Keypoints: Training-Free Robot Manipulation
RoboticsJun 30

Sequential Planning via Anchored Robotic Keypoints: Training-Free Robot Manipulation

Bryce Grant, Aryeh Rothenberg, Logan Senning +3

GROW²: Teaching Robots to Select Tools and Find Their Functional Regions
AIJun 30

GROW²: Teaching Robots to Select Tools and Find Their Functional Regions

GROW² enables robots to pick the best improvised tool from a cluttered scene and find its functional region using vision-language models and 3D reconstruction.

Yuhong Deng, Yuyao Liu, David Hsu

Vision-Language-Kinematics: Learning Humanoid Loco-Manipulation from Synthetic Interactions in Reconstructed 3D Scenes
HumanoidJun 30

Vision-Language-Kinematics: Learning Humanoid Loco-Manipulation from Synthetic Interactions in Reconstructed 3D Scenes

Connecting egocentric observations to whole-body action is a fundamental challenge for humanoid robots operating in human-centered environments. A humanoid m…

Yen-Jen Wang, Jiaman Li, Sirui Chen +9

CacheMPC: Certified Cached Model Predictive Control for Quadruped Locomotion
RoboticsJun 29

CacheMPC: Certified Cached Model Predictive Control for Quadruped Locomotion

Nimesh Khandelwal, Mehul Anand, Shakti S. Gupta +1