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robotics

1,589 papers

#machine learning Preprint Oct 2026

Mulligan: Performance-Guided Data Collection for Efficient On-Robot Learning

Learning from human demonstrations is a reliable way to teach robots new tasks, but the gains from each additional demonstration shrink as the policy improves. Continued improvement can instead come from supervised deployment, where an operator places the objects and intervenes when the policy fails. We ask how to maxi...

Lars Ankile, Perry Dong, R. Bhowmik et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Transporting Unsecured Stacked Payloads with a Quadrupedal Robot via Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning

Transporting unsecured payloads with legged robots over uneven terrain requires balancing locomotion performance and payload stability, since aggressive motion can destabilize the payload even when the robot remains stable. We study quadrupedal transportation of unsecured stacked boxes on an edgeless torso-mounted boar...

Nobuo Namura, Masayuki Hiromoto, Kento Uemura et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Spacecraft Rendezvous Trajectory Generation with Modular Constraints via Diffusion Model Composition

Emerging mission classes such as on-orbit servicing, satellite inspection, and active debris removal require trajectory design methods that are adaptable to a variety of mission scenarios. We present a diffusion-based trajectory generation approach for rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) that enables flexible con...

Mariko A. Storey-Matsutani, Richard Linares · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Oct 2026

Learning Task and Motion Plans from Real Demonstrations with Hybrid Flow Matching

Long-horizon mobile manipulation requires a task plan and the motion that executes it. Generative planners trained on demonstration produce both in one pass, requiring neither a symbolic domain nor search. To date, however, they have relied on thousands of scripted demonstrations of fixed-base arms and executed open lo...

Z. García, Andreu Matoses Gimenez, J. Alonso-Mora · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Oct 2026

Flow Policies as Actions of Skill-Level World Models: Learned and Symbolic Abstractions for Long-Horizon Planning

Latent world models enable robots to plan by predicting the consequences of actions. Planning long tasks with control-rate actions requires many prediction steps, which enlarges the search space and accumulates error. Skill-level actions shorten these sequences, but a symbolic skill vocabulary requires domain knowledge...

Andreu Matoses Gimenez, Andrei-Carlo Papuc, Christian Pek et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Oct 2026

Exploiting Hierarchical Controller Structure in Contextual Parameter Learning for Humanoid Loco-Manipulation

This work proposes a contextual Bayesian optimization framework for joint parameter learning in hierarchical control systems, and evaluates the approach for humanoid loco-manipulation, jointly tuning a centroidal predictive controller and a whole-body controller for physical box pushing under varying box mass.

Sebastian Hirt, Lukas Theiner, Jan Peters et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Frame-Level Temporal Alignment for Human-to-Robot Visual Adaptation

Transferring visual representations pretrained on human videos to robot manipulation requires learning reliable correspondences between human and robot demonstrations. However, paired demonstrations can differ in execution rate and in the proportion of non-key frames that do not directly reflect task progress. Frames a...

Xizhe Zhang, Jingfeng Zhang, Zirun Zhou et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Latent Safety Filters: When a Lossy Encoder Admits a Transferable Certificate

Latent safety filters certify safety on a learned low-dimensional representation of the state, enabling constraints that resist analytic description. Because the encoder is lossy, a filter can report safe while the physical state is unsafe, with no detectable model error. Existing transfer conditions leave the effect o...

Johannes Mootz, Zahra Nili Ahmadabadi, Reza Akhavian · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Oct 2026

Humanoid Rickshaw Pulling: Whole-Body Locomotion under Coupled Wheeled Loads

Humanoid robots could transport payloads substantially heavier than themselves by pulling passive wheeled vehicles instead of carrying the load. This capability, however, creates a coupled locomotion problem: the robot must maintain persistent upper-body contact while adapting to unknown, configuration-dependent forces...

Yang-Zhi Yang, Xian-Sheng Lin, Zhao-Ming Xie et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Open access Oct 2026

Exact Optimal Transport by Matching

Balanced discrete optimal transport between n sources and n targets of unit mass is exactly the minimum-cost assignment problem-a bipartite perfect matching-and is therefore solvable exactly by industrial matching engines in milliseconds to seconds. We ask when the exact approach beats the standard approximate alternat...

Dmitry Kamenetsky · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Oct 2026

SUAVE: Unified Video-Action Models via Masked Diffusion

A single SUAVE model predicts long-horizon video and acts as a policy, competitive with dedicated world models and specialized action policies on static and dynamic manipulation tasks and shows that masked diffusion is a practical and versatile foundation for unified video-action modeling.

Rhythm Syed, Jean-Pierre Mercat, Sedrick Scott Keh et al. · 0 citations
#machine learning Preprint Oct 2026

H-JEPA: End-to-End Learning of Hierarchical World Models for Visual Planning

H-JEPA is introduced, an end-to-end recipe for training a hierarchy of action-conditioned JEPAs in which each level predicts farther ahead in its own learned latent space in which each level's predictions become subgoals for the planner below it.

Wan-Cong Zhang, Basile Terver, Michael G. Rabbat et al. · 7 citations · ⚡2

From tech blogs

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MIT News · Artificial Intelligence Nov 5, 2026

Clearing up a robot’s fuzzy memory

A new system identifies and corrects unreliable object descriptions stored in a robot’s memory, improving the robot’s ability to interact with its environment.

Google DeepMind Blog Oct 13, 2026

Gemini 4 Argon for Robotics

Discover Gemini 4 Argon for robotics: leading the ERQA benchmark with physical reasoning, zero-shot control, Real2Sim, and agentic workflows.

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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