mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

A Review of Robot Learning for Manipulation: Challenges, Representations, and Algorithms

arXiv 1907.03146 ↗First posted 6 Jul 2019cs.ROcited by 136

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Cited by 22 in Offline RL and imitation learning from data, but placed by its own abstract, which didn’t fit.

Abstract (arXiv)

A key challenge in intelligent robotics is creating robots that are capable of directly interacting with the world around them to achieve their goals. The last decade has seen substantial growth in research on the problem of robot manipulation, which aims to exploit the increasing availability of affordable robot arms and grippers to create robots capable of directly interacting with the world to achieve their goals. Learning will be central to such autonomous systems, as the real world contains too much variation for a robot to expect to have an accurate model of its environment, the objects in it, or the skills required to manipulate them, in advance. We aim to survey a representative subset of that research which uses machine learning for manipulation. We describe a formalization of the robot manipulation learning problem that synthesizes existing research into a single coherent framework and highlight the many remaining research opportunities and challenges.

Key facts. Cited by 136 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 6 Jul 2019.

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Citing papers per year: 2019: 2; 2020: 2; 2021: 10; 2022: 17; 2023: 18; 2024: 28; 2025: 32; 2026: 27.

136 papers.

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  1. 2021How to Train Your Robot with Deep Reinforcement Learning; Lessons We've Learnedcited by 201
  2. 2024Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotics: A Survey of Real-World Successescited by 153
  3. 2025SimpleVLA-RL: Scaling VLA Training via Reinforcement Learningcited by 141
  4. 2021ThriftyDAgger: Budget-Aware Novelty and Risk Gating for Interactive Imitation Learningcited by 98
  5. 2022DexPoint: Generalizable Point Cloud Reinforcement Learning for Sim-to-Real Dexterous Manipulationcited by 78
  6. 2024Exploring the Adversarial Vulnerabilities of Vision-Language-Action Models in Roboticscited by 68
  7. 2025Large VLM-based Vision-Language-Action Models for Robotic Manipulation: A Surveycited by 66
  8. 2022See, Hear, and Feel: Smart Sensory Fusion for Robotic Manipulationcited by 61
  9. 2024Point Cloud Matters: Rethinking the Impact of Different Observation Spaces on Robot Learningcited by 45
  10. 2021Articulated Object Interaction in Unknown Scenes with Whole-Body Mobile Manipulationcited by 44
  11. 2023Chat with the Environment: Interactive Multimodal Perception Using Large Language Modelscited by 42
  12. 2025Reflective Planning: Vision-Language Models for Multi-Stage Long-Horizon Robotic Manipulationcited by 40
38 more
  1. 2020The EMPATHIC Framework for Task Learning from Implicit Human Feedbackcited by 38
  2. 2023Stabilize to Act: Learning to Coordinate for Bimanual Manipulationcited by 36
  3. 2024A Survey of Embodied Learning for Object-Centric Robotic Manipulationcited by 34
  4. 2025MAP-VLA: Memory-Augmented Prompting for Vision-Language-Action Model in Robotic Manipulationcited by 28
  5. 2022A System for Imitation Learning of Contact-Rich Bimanual Manipulation Policiescited by 26
  6. 2024Autoregressive Action Sequence Learning for Robotic Manipulationcited by 26
  7. 2023Differentially Private Attention Computationcited by 25
  8. 2024Ag2Manip: Learning Novel Manipulation Skills with Agent-Agnostic Visual and Action Representationscited by 23
  9. 2020Residual Learning from Demonstration: Adapting DMPs for Contact-rich Manipulationcited by 22
  10. 2022L2C2: Locally Lipschitz Continuous Constraint towards Stable and Smooth Reinforcement Learningcited by 22
  11. 2022Toward Compositional Generalization in Object-Oriented World Modelingcited by 22
  12. 2021Vision-driven Compliant Manipulation for Reliable, High-Precision Assembly Taskscited by 18
  13. 2022Real World Offline Reinforcement Learning with Realistic Data Sourcecited by 16
  14. 2021Zero-shot Task Adaptation using Natural Languagecited by 15
  15. 2025Vidarc: Embodied Video Diffusion Model for Closed-loop Controlcited by 15
  16. 2023A Human-Centered Safe Robot Reinforcement Learning Framework with Interactive Behaviorscited by 13
  17. 2023FastRLAP: A System for Learning High-Speed Driving via Deep RL and Autonomous Practicingcited by 13
  18. 2024SAFE-GIL: SAFEty Guided Imitation Learning for Robotic Systemscited by 13
  19. 2024Learning Variable Compliance Control From a Few Demonstrations for Bimanual Robot with Haptic Feedback Teleoperation Systemcited by 13
  20. 2025Touch begins where vision ends: Generalizable policies for contact-rich manipulationcited by 13
  21. 2025A Survey on Imitation Learning for Contact-Rich Tasks in Roboticscited by 12
  22. 2025InstaScene: Towards Complete 3D Instance Decomposition and Reconstruction from Cluttered Scenescited by 11
  23. 2021Learning to Infer Kinematic Hierarchies for Novel Object Instancescited by 10
  24. 2024Learning by Watching: A Review of Video-based Learning Approaches for Robot Manipulationcited by 10
  25. 2024Large Language Models for Orchestrating Bimanual Robotscited by 10
  26. 2025SeqVLA: Sequential Task Execution for Long-Horizon Manipulation with Completion-Aware Vision-Language-Action Modelcited by 10
  27. 2022Active Exploration for Robotic Manipulationcited by 9
  28. 2023Decision Making for Human-in-the-loop Robotic Agents via Uncertainty-Aware Reinforcement Learningcited by 9
  29. 2023ArrayBot: Reinforcement Learning for Generalizable Distributed Manipulation through Touchcited by 9
  30. 2024GenCHiP: Generating Robot Policy Code for High-Precision and Contact-Rich Manipulation Taskscited by 9
  31. 2025Dexplore: Scalable Neural Control for Dexterous Manipulation from Reference-Scoped Explorationcited by 9
  32. 2024RecoveryChaining: Learning Local Recovery Policies for Robust Manipulationcited by 8
  33. 2024Video2Reward: Generating Reward Function from Videos for Legged Robot Behavior Learningcited by 8
  34. 2025Grounding Actions in Camera Space: Observation-Centric Vision-Language-Action Policycited by 8
  35. 2025Score the Steps, Not Just the Goal: VLM-Based Subgoal Evaluation for Robotic Manipulationcited by 8
  36. 2025Guardian: Detecting Robotic Planning and Execution Errors with Vision-Language Modelscited by 8
  37. 2019Benchmark for Skill Learning from Demonstration: Impact of User Experience, Task Complexity, and Start Configuration on Performancecited by 7
  38. 2024HYPERmotion: Learning Hybrid Behavior Planning for Autonomous Loco-manipulationcited by 7

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