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robotics

1,114 papers

#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Workhorse: Learning Robust Whole-Body Humanoid Loco-Manipulation from Human Data

Humanoid robots still struggle to plan contact-rich whole-body manipulation from egocentric RGB and proprioception. Workhorse learns such manipulation from robot-free human demonstrations. A visual planner predicts five-link targets: the poses of the torso, both wrists, and both feet. A reinforcement-learning whole-bod...

Songbo Hu, Qiayuan Liao, Yufeng Chi et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

HULK: Learning Whole-Body Forceful Loco-Manipulation for Humanoids

Humanoid loco-manipulation of large, heavy objects demands forceful interaction across the entire body. However, such payloads shift a humanoid's center of mass and impose sustained loads across the upper body, challenging balance and command tracking. We present HULK, a whole-body control framework for forceful loco-m...

An Dang, Arturo Flores Alvarez, Yu-Ming Chen et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Autonomous Droplet Navigation via Model-Based Reinforcement Learning: Zero-Shot Transfer and Emergent Dynamics

Self-driving laboratories (SDLs) are transforming chemical and materials discovery through closed-loop automation, yet automated infrastructure for physical manipulation of soft, deformable matter remains beyond current robotic platforms. A critical instance is autonomous droplet transport on an open surface, where con...

Rajneesh Anand, Mayuresh V. Kothare · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Temporally Interpretable Differentiable Decision Trees

Interpretability offers a solution to safe autonomy by providing transparency into an agent's underlying decision-making model. Within sequential-decision making tasks, differentiable decision trees (DDTs) are one approach to such interpretability, maintaining automatic-differentiable policies while providing humans wi...

Eisuke Hirota, Aarav Sane, Rohan Paleja · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Multi-Agent Coordination via Support-Preserving Distillation

Offline MARL increasingly relies on generative policies to model multimodal joint behavior, typically by distilling a centralized teacher into decentralized one-step actors under the CTDE. We identify a failure mode at the teacher training stage: standard flow-based teachers pair noise with replay targets independently...

Sangmin Lee, Youngju Na, Chanmi Lee et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

ModPack: Extensible Teleoperation Interface for Bimanual Mobile Manipulation

Existing teleoperation systems are often tailored to specific robot hardware and task domains, limiting their scalability and adaptability. We present ModPack, a modular and extensible teleoperation system designed to support diverse robot embodiments and task requirements within a unified framework. At the core of Mod...

Joshua Citron, Renee Zbizika, Zeyi Liu et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Adapting Generalist Vehicle Models for High-Speed MPC Across Terrains

High-speed off-road autonomy requires precise closed-loop control for a target vehicle while remaining robust across changing terrains. Recent forward kinodynamic (FKD) prediction foundation models suggest a promising path, starting from a generalist model and specializing it to the target platform. However, effective...

Rwik Rana, Jesse Quattrociocchi, Christian Ellis et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

FAR: Failure-Aware Retry for Test-Time Recovery and Continual Policy Improvement

Robot policies inevitably encounter failures when deployed in real environments. Naive retries often repeat the same mistakes, while many existing recovery methods rely on human intervention. In this paper, we propose Failure-Aware Retry (FAR), a framework that enables robots to learn from previous failures at test tim...

Haoran Hao, Shahram Najam Syed, Jeffrey Ichnowski et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

ED3R: Energy-Aware Distributed Disaster Detection via Cooperative Agents in Robotic Systems

Robotics are expected to support environmental monitoring and disaster detection, where decisions must be made under uncertainty, resource limitations, and strict operational constraints. In critical missions, such as wildfires, robots must not only identify hazardous events with sufficient confidence, but also manage...

Lina Magoula, Nikolaos Koursioumpas, Nancy Alonistioti et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Targeting World Models to Compromise Robot Learning Pipelines

World models have recently seen a rapid growth in both their popularity and capability as more data efficient tools for generating robot training data or simulating real world environments, with many works proposing their integration into the robot learning pipeline. While highly practical, in this work we demonstrate...

Ethan Rathbun, Ahmed Agha, Saaduddin Mahmud et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Unifying Object-Centric World Models and Diffusion Policy: A Hierarchical Framework for Multi-Stage Robotic Tasks

Visual world models have shown great potential in learning complex system dynamics. Recent advancements leverage these models as transition functions within Model Predictive Control (MPC) frameworks to solve various control tasks. When applied to robotics, however, they are limited to single-stage tasks such as reachin...

Raktim Gautam Goswami, Prashanth Krishnamurthy, Yann LeCun et al. · 0 citations
#artificial intelligence Preprint Open access Oct 2026

StressDream: Steering Video World Models for Robust Policy Evaluation and Improvement

Video world models (WMs) have shown promise for policy evaluation and improvement by imagining realistic future observations conditioned on ego-robot actions. While WMs can model distributions over futures, policy evaluation and improvement typically rely on nominal imaginations, which can miss high-impact outcomes of...

Junwon Seo, Sushant Veer, Ran Tian et al. · 0 citations

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Microsoft Research Blog Sep 23, 2026

Offloaded inference for real-world physical AI robotics

Robots are getting smarter, but how can their hardware match that growth? New Microsoft Research findings show that moving AI inference beyond the robot can improve task success, boost efficiency, and support more advanced physical AI workloads. The post Offloaded inference for real-world physical AI robotics appeared first on Microsoft Research.

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