mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

TossingBot: Learning to Throw Arbitrary Objects with Residual Physics

arXiv 1903.11239 ↗First posted 27 Mar 2019cs.RO cs.AI cs.CVcited by 131

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

We investigate whether a robot arm can learn to pick and throw arbitrary objects into selected boxes quickly and accurately. Throwing has the potential to increase the physical reachability and picking speed of a robot arm. However, precisely throwing arbitrary objects in unstructured settings presents many challenges: from acquiring reliable pre-throw conditions (e.g. initial pose of object in manipulator) to handling varying object-centric properties (e.g. mass distribution, friction, shape) and dynamics (e.g. aerodynamics). In this work, we propose an end-to-end formulation that jointly learns to infer control parameters for grasping and throwing motion primitives from visual observations (images of arbitrary objects in a bin) through trial and error. Within this formulation, we investigate the synergies between grasping and throwing (i.e., learning grasps that enable more accurate throws) and between simulation and deep learning (i.e., using deep networks to predict residuals on top of control parameters predicted by a physics simulator). The resulting system, TossingBot, is able to grasp and throw arbitrary objects into boxes located outside its maximum reach range at 500+ mean picks per hour (600+ grasps per hour with 85% throwing accuracy); and generalizes to new objects and target locations. Videos are available at https://tossingbot.cs.princeton.edu

Key facts. Cited by 131 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 27 Mar 2019.

Builds on

No reference list yet.

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2020: 2; 2021: 31; 2022: 24; 2023: 28; 2024: 15; 2025: 17; 2026: 14.

131 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2020MOReL : Model-Based Offline Reinforcement Learningcited by 582
  2. 2022Perceiver-Actor: A Multi-Task Transformer for Robotic Manipulationcited by 545
  3. 2021Implicit Behavioral Cloningcited by 442
  4. 2021Bridge Data: Boosting Generalization of Robotic Skills with Cross-Domain Datasetscited by 248
  5. 2023TidyBot: Personalized Robot Assistance with Large Language Modelscited by 219
  6. 2023RoboGen: Towards Unleashing Infinite Data for Automated Robot Learning via Generative Simulationcited by 206
  7. 2021Q-attention: Enabling Efficient Learning for Vision-based Robotic Manipulationcited by 85
  8. 2024From Imitation to Refinement -- Residual RL for Precise Assemblycited by 80
  9. 2024Explore until Confident: Efficient Exploration for Embodied Question Answeringcited by 74
  10. 2021UMPNet: Universal Manipulation Policy Network for Articulated Objectscited by 64
  11. 2021Physics-Integrated Variational Autoencoders for Robust and Interpretable Generative Modelingcited by 59
  12. 2023Waypoint-Based Imitation Learning for Robotic Manipulationcited by 59
38 more
  1. 2021Learning to See before Learning to Act: Visual Pre-training for Manipulationcited by 50
  2. 2024TRANSIC: Sim-to-Real Policy Transfer by Learning from Online Correctioncited by 50
  3. 2022Look Closer: Bridging Egocentric and Third-Person Views with Transformers for Robotic Manipulationcited by 49
  4. 2022Learning rigid dynamics with face interaction graph networkscited by 43
  5. 2022Near-Optimal Sample Complexity Bounds for Constrained MDPscited by 36
  6. 2021From Machine Learning to Robotics: Challenges and Opportunities for Embodied Intelligencecited by 35
  7. 2024Deep Generative Models in Robotics: A Survey on Learning from Multimodal Demonstrationscited by 35
  8. 2021Autonomous Reinforcement Learning: Formalism and Benchmarkingcited by 33
  9. 2023DribbleBot: Dynamic Legged Manipulation in the Wildcited by 33
  10. 2023Dynamic Handover: Throw and Catch with Bimanual Handscited by 33
  11. 2026DynamicVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Dynamic Object Manipulationcited by 33
  12. 2021Autonomous Reinforcement Learning via Subgoal Curriculacited by 32
  13. 2022Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Precise Soccer Shooting Skills using a Quadrupedal Robotcited by 32
  14. 2023Self-Improving Robots: End-to-End Autonomous Visuomotor Reinforcement Learningcited by 29
  15. 2022A Comprehensive Review of Digital Twin -- Part 1: Modeling and Twinning Enabling Technologiescited by 28
  16. 2021Residual Reinforcement Learning from Demonstrationscited by 27
  17. 2026The Long-Horizon Task Mirage? Diagnosing Where and Why Agentic Systems Breakcited by 25
  18. 2021SwingBot: Learning Physical Features from In-hand Tactile Exploration for Dynamic Swing-up Manipulationcited by 24
  19. 2021Generalization Through Hand-Eye Coordination: An Action Space for Learning Spatially-Invariant Visuomotor Controlcited by 24
  20. 2021Meta-Adaptive Nonlinear Control: Theory and Algorithmscited by 23
  21. 2022Object Detection Using Sim2Real Domain Randomization for Robotic Applicationscited by 23
  22. 2020Residual Learning from Demonstration: Adapting DMPs for Contact-rich Manipulationcited by 22
  23. 2022Model-Based Offline Reinforcement Learning with Pessimism-Modulated Dynamics Beliefcited by 22
  24. 2022Visuotactile Affordances for Cloth Manipulation with Local Controlcited by 20
  25. 2021Injecting Knowledge in Data-driven Vehicle Trajectory Predictorscited by 18
  26. 2023Chain-of-Thought Predictive Controlcited by 18
  27. 2021Widening Access to Applied Machine Learning with TinyMLcited by 17
  28. 2021Sample Efficient Reinforcement Learning via Model-Ensemble Exploration and Exploitationcited by 17
  29. 2023AdaptSim: Task-Driven Simulation Adaptation for Sim-to-Real Transfercited by 17
  30. 2022That Sounds Right: Auditory Self-Supervision for Dynamic Robot Manipulationcited by 12
  31. 2023Robotic Table Tennis: A Case Study into a High Speed Learning Systemcited by 12
  32. 2023Autonomous Robotic Reinforcement Learning with Asynchronous Human Feedbackcited by 12
  33. 2026VLANeXt: Recipes for Building Strong VLA Modelscited by 12
  34. 2022Automating Reinforcement Learning with Example-based Resetscited by 11
  35. 2025Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap for Athletic Loco-Manipulationcited by 11
  36. 2022Knowledge-augmented Deep Learning and Its Applications: A Surveycited by 10
  37. 2024QuasiSim: Parameterized Quasi-Physical Simulators for Dexterous Manipulations Transfercited by 10
  38. 2026RFS: Reinforcement Learning with Residual Flow Steering for Dexterous Manipulationcited by 10

50 most cited of 131 All 131 (JSON)