The paper presents a dual‑rate controller for robotic ultrasound that limits probe rotation speed to keep contact force within safe bounds. By deriving a closed‑form orientation‑rate limit that accounts for contact stiffness, force‑loop gains, and disturbance rejection, the authors implement a timestamp‑based delay reconstruction and joint‑torque force estimation. Experiments on a gelatin phantom show that the rate‑limited controller reduces first‑second RMS force error by 0.40 N, while a fixed rate cap near the predicted ceiling offers similar force performance but faster convergence.
Ctrl‑F introduces a hierarchical motion‑force framework that augments humanoid motion tracking with explicit 3‑D force commands at designated contact points. The system combines a unified motion‑force controller that follows reference motion while applying the commanded force, and a high‑level force planner that generates force commands online based on object state and proprioception. In both simulation and hardware experiments, Ctrl‑F successfully performs loco‑manipulation tasks requiring sustained interaction forces—such as dragging, pushing, lifting, and kicking—handling loads up to 20 kg and adapting to additional mid‑task loads, outperforming force‑blind trackers.
By Mengjie Zhao, Yuxin Chen, Yiyang Shao, Chuye Hong, Jiakang Chen, Koushil Sreenath, Masayoshi Tomizuka
arXiv:2607. 09218v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Whole-arm manipulation involves direct contact with the environment while the robot completes a task by distributing contact across multiple links as contacts form, slide, and break.
By Rishabh Madan, Angchen Xie, Samantha Saak, Andres Blanco, Dohyeok Lee, Sarah Grace Brown, Yunting Yan, Mark Zolotas, Jose Barreiros, Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee
arXiv:2606. 14188v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We present CORD-SLS, a real-time control method for safe deformable object manipulation, with a focus on ropes and cloth.
By Wei-Chen Li, Jeffrey Fang, Sasanka Polisetti, Yuexi Song, Glen Chou
arXiv:2607. 11734v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Differentiable simulators have advanced policy learning and model-based control, yet actuator dynamics remain an important source of sim-to-real error.
By Zhiyang Dou, John U. Onyemelukwe, Hangxing Zhang, Heng Zhang, Minghao Guo, Yunsheng Tian, Michal Piotr Lipiec, Joshua Jacob, Chao Liu, Peter Yichen Chen, Yuri Ivanov, Wojciech Matusik
arXiv:2607. 09218v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Whole-arm manipulation involves direct contact with the environment while the robot completes a task by distributing contact across multiple links as contacts form, slide, and break.
By Rishabh Madan, Angchen Xie, Samantha Saak, Andres Blanco, Dohyeok Lee, Sarah Grace Brown, Yunting Yan, Mark Zolotas, Jose Barreiros, Tapomayukh Bhattacharjee
arXiv:2607. 04234v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Deformable object manipulation poses challenges beyond task completion: successful execution must also maintain safe physical interaction, holding the object stably without slip or drop while avoiding excessive deformation.
By Bowen Jing, Mingxin Wang, Ruiyang Hao, Chenchen Ge, Hanwen Shen, Junjie He, Yang Cui, Yiming Hou, Weitao Zhou, Jiawei Wang, Minglei Li, Dandan Zhang, Ding Zhao, Houde Liu, Xiaofan Li, Si Liu, Ping Luo, Haibao Yu
FWBC‑VLA is a force‑aware framework that links vision‑language‑action (VLA) models with whole‑body compensation control for wheeled‑legged robots. It introduces HSR‑Force, a sensorless residual‑torque estimator that infers contact strength and encodes this information as tokens for the VLA action decoder, allowing the policy to detect contact onset, loading, and release. The system fine‑tunes a pretrained VLA backbone on a large WL&Arm dataset, combines proprioceptive, Jacobian‑derived force, and contact estimates to generate corrective actions, and demonstrates effectiveness in real‑world tasks such as whiteboard wiping and door opening.
By Yutian Zhang, Siyuan Ma, Liwen Yang, Yang Li, Ce Hao, Haozhen Chi, Dong We, Qiaojun Yu, Dibo Hou
arXiv:2607. 04234v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Deformable object manipulation poses challenges beyond task completion: successful execution must also maintain safe physical interaction, holding the object stably without slip or drop while avoiding excessive deformation.
By Bowen Jing, Mingxin Wang, Ruiyang Hao, Chenchen Ge, Hanwen Shen, Junjie He, Yang Cui, Yiming Hou, Weitao Zhou, Jiawei Wang, Minglei Li, Dandan Zhang, Ding Zhao, Houde Liu, Xiaofan Li, Si Liu, Ping Luo, Haibao Yu
arXiv:2610.08970v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Humanoid loco-manipulation of large, heavy objects demands forceful interaction across the entire body. However, such payloads shift a humanoid's cen...
By An Dang, Arturo Flores Alvarez, Yu-Ming Chen, Conor Mc Gartoll, Helen Sun, Aaron Ames, Nima Fazeli, Manikantan Nambi
HydroShear is a hydroelastic tactile simulator that models stick‑slip transitions, path‑dependent force and shear buildup, and full SE(3) object‑sensor interactions. It uses Signed Distance Functions to track indenter displacements on a sensor membrane, producing physics‑based force fields from arbitrary watertight geometries while remaining engine‑agnostic. Experiments on GelSight Minis show HydroShear reproduces real tactile shear more faithfully than existing methods, enabling zero‑shot sim‑to‑real reinforcement learning with a 93% success rate across four dexterous tasks.
By An Dang, Jayjun Lee, Mustafa Mukadam, X. Alice Wu, Bernadette Bucher, Manikantan Nambi, Nima Fazeli
arXiv:2609.21751v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Manipulating objects requires understanding not only their motion, but also the physical properties that determine it. For articulated objects, these...
By Tim Engelbracht, Ren\'e Zurbr\"ugg, Mayank Mittal, Marco Hutter, Marc Pollefeys, Hermann Blum, Zuria Bauer