Robotics & Automation
Robotics & Automation news — Monday 02 November 2026
70 stories from 2 sources, every one in English. Each links to its publisher.
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Tutor Intelligence raises Series B to scale model training, robot deployments
Robotics Business Review
Tutor trains its Sonny robot on real-world manipulation tasks. Credit: Eugene Demaitre Real-world data, human “tutors,” and simulation are all part of the recipe for training AI models to enable next-generation robots to tackle a widening…
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Gentherm designs ThermAffyx to protect, move patients during robotic surgeries
Robotics Business Review
ThermAffyx both securely positions and warms patients during robot-assisted surgeries. Source: Gentherm Many healthcare advances come from within that industry, but innovations from other industries can also find a role. Gentherm Medical…
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Top 10 robotics developments of October 2026
Robotics Business Review
October 2026 was a whirlwind month for the robotics industry. Last month, we celebrated the 20th anniversary of RoboBusiness and announced that next year, the show will be rebranded to Robotics Summit & Expo West. In addition, prominent…
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What AgTech founders get wrong about ROI
Robotics Business Review
The Robot Report Podcast · What AgTech founders get wrong about ROI Connie Bowen, founding general partner of Farmhand Ventures. In Episode 268 of The Robot Report Podcast, our guest is Connie Bowen, the founding general partner of…
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Decompose and Reorganize: Planning with Primitives and Visuomotor Policies Learned from Demonstrations
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2607.25397v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Successfully automating dexterous, long-horizon bimanual manipulation requires frameworks capable of both high-level reasoning and fine-grained execution. Traditional task and motion…
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Sequential Planning via Anchored Robotic Keypoints
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2606.30613v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Changes to what a robot can see do not necessarily mean that there is a change in the problem it is trying to solve, and many language-conditioned manipulation systems struggle with this…
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Rapid co-design of Buoyancy-assisted robots for Challenging Locomotion using Gaussian Evolutionary Specialists
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2606.07424v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Designing high-performance legged robots requires jointly optimizing morphology and control. Model-free reinforcement learning (RL) enables learning complex controllers during co-design…
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How a group that cannot communicate knows itself by its enemy
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.40835v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Teams that cannot communicate seem stuck with what each member sees. We show that their opponent can tell them the rest. Silent hunters, jammed robots and traders who never meet all face an…
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A Hybrid Path Planning Framework for Assistive Wheelchair Navigation in Dynamic Pedestrian Environments
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.42049v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Autonomous wheelchairs can improve the quality of life for individuals with mobility impairments by providing greater independence. However, reliable navigation especially in human…
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Proof-Carrying Evolution: Black-Box Search, White-Box Flight
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.42043v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: We study whether a language model can help design controllers whose behavior can be formally checked. In proof-carrying evolution (PCE), a search proposes controllers together with their…
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Nexus-VLA: Bridging Human and Robot Experiences via a Shared Hierarchical Semantic Latent Space
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.42021v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large-scale egocentric human videos provide rich and scalable manipulation experience for robot policy learning, yet substantial embodiment gaps in visual appearance, kinematic structure, and…
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Suspended-Fabric Robotic Manipulation Surfaces: Modelling, Design Space, and Multimodular Extensio
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41982v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Robotic Manipulation Surfaces (RMS) reposition objects by deforming the surface on which they rest. A recent class of RMS suspends a continuous fabric sheet from a sparse grid of vertical…
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Design and Validation of a Robotic Knee Exoskeleton with Musculoskeletal Simulation-Derived Biological Torque Control
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41981v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Data-driven controllers have enabled lower-limb robotic exoskeletons to adapt assistance to the user across many tasks. A leading example is biological torque control, which estimates the…
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Online Learning of Heterogeneous Locomotion Dynamics under Reinforcement Learning Policies for Precise Loco-Manipulation
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41892v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: How to reuse a pretrained locomotion policy for precise loco-manipulation is still an open problem. We propose an online method to learn the closed-loop dynamics under a frozen locomotion…
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META-Robot: Self-Cognition and Capability Scaling in Agentic Robots
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41868v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: LLM-based robotic agent systems can generate programs for robot control, yet their generalization to new tasks often depends on elaborate scaffolding. Expanding their skill repertoires alone…
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SketchMate: Agentic Geometric Reasoning for Zero-Shot Precision Insertion
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41844v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Inserting an unseen part requires sub-millimetre precision and the correct orientation of keyed features. Current zero-shot agentic manipulation methods built on vision-language models (VLMs)…
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Integrating Low-Thrust Transfer Dynamics into POMDP Planning for On-Orbit Servicing
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41839v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent developments in both high-thrust (HT) and low-thrust (LT) propulsion technologies broaden design options for on-orbit servicing (OOS) missions. However, incorporating LT transfers into…
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ResMerge: Residual Policy Learning and Merging for Continual Adaptation of Pre-trained Robot Policies
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41663v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Continual adaptation to new tasks is essential for robots deployed in the real world, but adapting pre-trained policies remains challenging due to parameter growth and the need for continual…
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RTPolicy: Real-Time (32.9 Hz) Multi-View Visuomotor Policy for Robotic Manipulation on Edge Devices
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41625v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Low inference latency is critical for closed-loop robotic manipulation, especially under asynchronous inference, where action chunks must be updated promptly to correct accumulated…
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MolmoSpaces-CommonSense: Evaluating Commonsense in Robotic Manipulation Policies
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41377v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Real-world robotic manipulation requires reasoning about cluttered scenes, partially observable or hidden objects, and semantically appropriate actions, in addition to low-level execution…
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DiffWBC: Unlocking Steerable General Humanoid Motion Tracking via One-Step Diffusion Whole-Body Control
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41354v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: General humanoid motion trackers typically rely on deterministic policies that cannot adapt online without brittle reference editing or costly retraining. We present DiffWBC, shifting…
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Geometry-Aware Humanoid Retargeting via Manifold ODEs
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41349v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In this paper, we focus on interaction-preserving motion retargeting, which transfers human demonstrations to humanoids while maintaining spatial relationships with objects and terrain…
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HandMimicX: Learning Human-Like Dexterous Manipulation via an Object-Centric Policy from Egocentric Videos
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41336v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Learning dexterous manipulation from human videos remains an open challenge, particularly in the context of transferring a single demonstration into a spatially generalizable robotic skill…
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CONSORT: Uncertainty-Constrained Multi-Robot Planning for Cooperative Localization in GPS-Denied Environments
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41235v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Centralized multi-agent path planning with cooperative localization in GPS-denied environments is generally computationally intractable when formulated in full belief space due to tightly…
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CaPtain: A Pipeline for Post-Training Code-as-Policy Robot Agents
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.40799v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Across coding, web, and tool-use tasks, language-model agents are now routinely trained with the same recipe: supervised fine-tuning (SFT) to learn the interface, then multi-turn…
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WorldBridge: Bridging Video and Action for Task Generalization in World Action Models
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.40748v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Achieving the broad task generalization of embodied models in physical environments remains a central challenge in robot learning. We study this challenge in World Action Models (WAMs)…
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LOGIV: Graph-Verified Execution with Causal Local Repair for Long-Horizon Robot Tasks
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.40016v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Agentic robots must turn a high-level goal into actions while keeping the physical conditions needed for future steps valid. A completed action does not ensure that its effects will…
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SimRetract: Zero-Shot Sim-to-Real Robotic Assistance for Retractor Take-Over in Open Surgery
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.38234v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We demonstrate the first zero-shot sim-to-real transfer for a surgeon-robot collaboration task in open surgery: retractor take-over. A robot arm takes a retractor from the surgeon's hand…
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Denoising Multirobot Trajectories
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2609.35651v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Multi-robot trajectory planning is a fundamental problem in multi-robot coordination but remains computationally challenging due to its nonconvex, multimodal, and high-dimensional nature…
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More than a Manipulator: Planning Propellant-Free Attitude Maneuvers for Free-Floating Spacecraft
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2607.12130v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Spacecraft attitude control is traditionally achieved using momentum exchange devices or propellant-consuming thrusters. Meanwhile, a growing number of missions require robotic…
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VEGA: Learning Navigation VLAs from In-the-Wild Egocentric Video with Geometric Trajectory Supervision
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2606.18426v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We introduce VEGA, an approach for training navigation VisionLanguage-Action (VLA) models from unlabeled egocentric navigation videos. Internet-scale egocentric videos provide a scalable…
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NDPP-Grasp: Non-Differentiable Physical Plausibility Constraint-Guided Task-Oriented Dexterous Grasp Generation
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2606.02432v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Task-oriented dexterous grasp generation aims to produce dexterous grasp poses that are both physically plausible and functionally suitable for specified manipulation tasks. Existing…
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TacO: Benchmarking Tactile Sensors for Object Manipulation
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2605.21976v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Vision-based learning from demonstrations has achieved remarkable success in enabling robots to perform manipulation tasks and high-level semantic reasoning, yet it remains insufficient…
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Semantically Adaptive Control Barrier Functions with Vision-Language Models for Real-Time Robot Navigation
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2603.21142v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Robots operating in dynamic, unstructured environments must maintain safety without becoming unnecessarily conservative. While control barrier functions (CBFs) provide a principled…
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CHOP: Counterfactual Human Preference Labels Improve Obstacle Avoidance in Visuomotor Navigation Policies
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2603.02004v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Visuomotor navigation policies have shown strong perception-action coupling for embodied agents, yet they often struggle with safe navigation and dynamic obstacle avoidance in complex…
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EquiContact: A Hierarchical SE(3) Vision-to-Force Equivariant Framework for Spatially Generalizable Contact-rich Tasks
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2507.10961v5 Announce Type: replace Abstract: This paper presents a framework for learning vision-based robotic policies for contact-rich manipulation tasks, which generalize spatially across task configurations. We propose…
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CuPIQP: A Batched and Differentiable QP Solver on GPUs for Robot Learning and Control
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41021v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Quadratic programs (QPs) are fundamental building blocks of many robotic tasks such as inverse kinematics, whole-body control, and model predictive control. Extending these methods to…
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Robot Navigation and Canine Welfare: A Pilot Study Surfacing Challenges for Cross-Species Legibility and Proxy Validity in Animal-Machine Interaction
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.40921v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Autonomous delivery robots increasingly share residential spaces with companion animals, yet navigation behavior is rarely designed with animal welfare in mind. This paper presents a pilot…
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ROOF: Learning Humanoid Fall Recovery under Overhead Constraints
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.42097v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: A fallen humanoid beneath an overhead obstacle faces a coupled recovery problem. It must create clearance while organizing support for a stable rise, since attempting to stand before making…
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Language-Conditioned Behavioral Cloning for Autonomous Endoscope Guidance
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41978v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Automated endoscope guidance reduces the need for continuous manual camera control during minimally invasive surgery. However, the desired camera motion depends on the surgeon's immediate…
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Adaptive Coverage Algorithms for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks in Dynamic Worlds
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41936v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper extends an existing framework for the coordination of mobile agents in unknown worlds, by considering the possibility of dynamic instability. In the original problem, known as the…
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When the Simulator Fails, Not the Policy: Auditing Contact Artifacts in Simulated Robot Benchmarks
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41857v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Simulation benchmarks score robot policies by success rate, and every failed episode counts against the policy. Many of these failures are the simulator's fault, not the policy's; we find the…
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Visual-Inertial RGB-D SLAM with Encoders for a Differential Wheeled Robot
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41768v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent years have seen multiple impressive results in visual-inertial odometry (VIO) techniques, by which accurate state estimation can be achieved via the extended Kalman filter (EKF) or…
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Higher-Order Kinematic Derivatives for Aspect-Preserving Real-Time Numerical Inverse Kinematics
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41752v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper leverages the higher-order kinematic derivatives of serial robots to achieve efficient, aspect-preserving real-time inverse kinematics. First, a family of higher-order solvers is…
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When Architectural Spaces Start to Act
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41724v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Architectural spaces are increasingly gaining robotic capabilities. Architectural robots such as robotic partitions, ceilings, furniture, facades, and other spatial components can…
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Biomechanics do not predict perceptual and cognitive consequences of force augmentation
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41679v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Wearable force-augmentation technologies, including exoskeletons and soft exosuits, are being developed for occupational and rehabilitation settings to enhance performance by reducing the…
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Interaction-Aware Sampling-Based Motion Planning for Autonomous Surface Vessels in Urban Waterways
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41676v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Autonomous surface vessels operating in urban waterways must coordinate with other vessels in confined spaces while complying with traffic regulations, often without knowing their intentions…
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GPU-accelerated Incremental Euclidean Distance Transform for Online Motion Planning of Mobile Robots
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41667v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: In this letter, we present a volumetric mapping system that effectively calculates Occupancy Grid Maps (OGMs) and Euclidean Distance Transforms (EDTs) with parallel computing. Unlike these…
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Direct Action-Manifold Modeling for Efficient and Robust Bimanual Manipulation
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41643v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Diffusion and flow matching visuomotor policies require iterative denoising or numerical integration for multimodal action generation, introducing latency and execution mismatch. We instead…
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A complete analytical characterization of optimal collision-free motion for two robots
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41558v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Collision-free motion planning for multi-agent robotic systems remains an active research area because of the complexity of coordinating robot trajectories, with applications ranging from…
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Contact-based optimization for collision-free motion planning for a million robots
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41548v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-agent robotic systems have attracted growing interest in recent years, with applications ranging from coordinated drone shows to autonomous operations on land, in the air, and on water…
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AC-SMPC: Differentiable Actor--Critic MPC with State Constraints for Safe and Fast Robot Navigation
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41477v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Achieving safe navigation in confined dynamic environments remains a challenging problem, as robots must balance navigation efficiency with safety. Existing actor--critic MPC architectures…
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SAFARI: Semantic- And Frontier-driven Autonomous Risk Inspection
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41456v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Robotic exploration can reduce human exposure to hazardous environments by autonomously searching unknown areas for objects of interest while constructing a complete, risk-aware map. However…
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Physically Constrained Kinematic Calibration for High-Precision Robotic Needle Guidance
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41429v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Percutaneous needle insertion is a common practice in minimally invasive procedures whose clinical success depends on accurate needle placement. However, achieving the necessary precision is…
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BioAgent: Self-Directed Skill Acquisition and Capability Growth for Long-Horizon Laboratory Protocols
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41383v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Executing an unfamiliar laboratory protocol requires a robot to identify missing capabilities and determine whether each operation remains valid as the experiment progresses. This letter…
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HIPC: Humanoid Iterative Planning and Control via Goal-Conditioned Motion Closure
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41334v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent generative models are widely used to provide whole-body motion for humanoid tracking. Current methods combine motion generators with controllers in an open-loop paradigm, which leads…
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Cross-Embodiment Motion Planning by Coupling Body-Agnostic World Model with Differentiable Ego-Dynamics
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41330v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Motion planning in clutter is embodiment-specific: the feasible free space and reachable commands depend on each robot's geometry and dynamics. Existing cross-embodiment policies output…
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Learning from Physical Experience:Context-Space Adaptation for Robotic Manipulation
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41320v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent multimodal foundation models exhibit strong perception, reasoning, and in-context learning capabilities, but translating these capabilities into physical action remains challenging…
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TRACE: Target-State Risk-Aligned Conditional Execution for Embodied Tracking
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41275v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Embodied visual tracking requires a robot to follow a language-specified person under occlusion, look-alike distractors, and ambiguous instructions. We show that improving tracking…
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Capability-Conditioned Graph Control Barrier Functions for Zero-Shot Safe Navigation of Heterogeneous Mobile Robot Teams
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41214v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Multi-robot systems are increasingly deployed as heterogeneous fleets with diverse kinematic and actuation capabilities. While graph control barrier function (GCBF) methods provide a scalable…
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A Capability-Aware Backup-Recoverability Filter for Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Navigation
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41188v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Safe navigation in heterogeneous multi-robot teams faces two coupled challenges: differences in robots' braking and turning capabilities limit how each robot can respond to an approaching…
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MUSBRIC: LEGO-Compatible Pneumatic Muscle Bricks for Reconfigurable Musculoskeletal Robots
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.40285v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Musculoskeletal robots combine compliant actuators with articulated skeletons, but exploring alternative configurations often requires repeated fabrication. We present MUSBRIC, a modular…
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Contact Imitation Interface: Transferring Dexterous Skills by Showing How Contact Unfolds
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41028v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Robot-free human demonstrations offer a promising route to scaling dexterous manipulation data. The key challenge is to preserve the demonstrator's natural dexterity while producing…
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Confidence-Modulated Safety Filtering for End-to-End Policies
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.40922v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: End-to-end policies, from task-specific controllers to robot foundation models, learn complex behavior from raw observations but are not guaranteed to remain safe, so they are often wrapped…
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FlapSim: A Composable MuJoCo Simulation Platform and Reduced-Order Aerodynamic Model Hierarchy for Flapping-Wing Robotics
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.40902v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Flapping-wing simulation must reconcile high-frequency wingbeat aerodynamics with the slower dynamics relevant to flight control and reinforcement learning. We present FlapSim, a modular…
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Flexibility-Aware Robotic Manipulation: Deformation Estimation, Kinematics, and Control via Distributed Inertial Measurement
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41702v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Flexible robot links challenge the rigid-body assumption, making joint measurements alone insufficient for accurate manipulation. This paper introduces a flexibility-aware manipulation…
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Veloxity: Towards Memory-Safe UAV Embedded Firmware using the Rust Programming Language
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.41053v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Recent years have witnessed increased momentum towards memory-safe programming languages for safety-critical systems. Memory-safe languages can eliminate entire classes of common software…
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OpenFlyV2: An onboard vision-language-action model for aerial perception and navigation
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.39287v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Human cognition flexibly draws on a shared perceptual foundation to understand environments, attend to referenced entities, reason about spatial relationships, and act. Endowing aerial…
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Actuator-Aware Observer Inputs for Cascade ADRC of Quadrotors Under Rotor Lag, Measurement Delay and Sensor Noise
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2610.39126v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: In sampled cascade linear active disturbance rejection control (LADRC) of quadrotors, the extended-state observer typically receives the instantaneous command, although the delayed…
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Compressed delayed-information projection for underwater navigation under acoustic measurement latency
arXiv cs.RO (Robotics)
arXiv:2609.27439v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Delayed acoustic position measurements describe past states but may reach an underwater vehicle after its navigation estimate has advanced. This paper presents compressed…