mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

ArrayBot: Reinforcement Learning for Generalizable Distributed Manipulation through Touch

arXiv 2306.16857 ↗First posted 29 Jun 2023cs.RO cs.LGcited by 11

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Abstract (arXiv)

We present ArrayBot, a distributed manipulation system consisting of a 16 × 16 array of vertically sliding pillars integrated with tactile sensors, which can simultaneously support, perceive, and manipulate the tabletop objects. Towards generalizable distributed manipulation, we leverage reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms for the automatic discovery of control policies. In the face of the massively redundant actions, we propose to reshape the action space by considering the spatially local action patch and the low-frequency actions in the frequency domain. With this reshaped action space, we train RL agents that can relocate diverse objects through tactile observations only. Surprisingly, we find that the discovered policy can not only generalize to unseen object shapes in the simulator but also transfer to the physical robot without any domain randomization. Leveraging the deployed policy, we present abundant real-world manipulation tasks, illustrating the vast potential of RL on ArrayBot for distributed manipulation.

Key facts. Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 26 of its 48 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 Jun 2023.

Builds on

26 of 48 references.

References · 26

  1. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
  2. 2018Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actorcited by 4,885
  3. 2015Continuous control with deep reinforcement learningcited by 3,407
  4. 2017Domain Randomization for Transferring Deep Neural Networks from Simulation to the Real Worldcited by 1,498
  5. 2021Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learningcited by 998
  6. 2018Learning Dexterous In-Hand Manipulationcited by 687
  7. 2017Sim-to-Real Transfer of Robotic Control with Dynamics Randomizationcited by 672
  8. 2022Real-World Robot Learning with Masked Visual Pre-trainingcited by 245
  9. 2021Neural Descriptor Fields: SE(3)-Equivariant Object Representations for Manipulationcited by 209
  10. 2020Learning in the Frequency Domaincited by 198
  11. 2019A Review of Robot Learning for Manipulation: Challenges, Representations, and Algorithmscited by 142
  12. 2023Rotating without Seeing: Towards In-hand Dexterity through Touchcited by 84
14 more
  1. 2022You Only Demonstrate Once: Category-Level Manipulation from Single Visual Demonstrationcited by 81
  2. 2023Dexterity from Touch: Self-Supervised Pre-Training of Tactile Representations with Robotic Playcited by 62
  3. 2020EGAD! an Evolved Grasping Analysis Dataset for diversity and reproducibility in robotic manipulationcited by 61
  4. 2022Sample Efficient Grasp Learning Using Equivariant Modelscited by 53
  5. 2021SORNet: Spatial Object-Centric Representations for Sequential Manipulationcited by 48
  6. 2021Learning Frequency Domain Approximation for Binary Neural Networkscited by 38
  7. 2018Augmenting Physical Simulators with Stochastic Neural Networks: Case Study of Planar Pushing and Bouncingcited by 36
  8. 2022Learning to Grasp the Ungraspable with Emergent Extrinsic Dexteritycited by 28
  9. 2021Skeleton Merger: an Unsupervised Aligned Keypoint Detectorcited by 27
  10. 2022USEEK: Unsupervised SE(3)-Equivariant 3D Keypoints for Generalizable Manipulationcited by 27
  11. 2021On the Feasibility of Learning Finger-gaiting In-hand Manipulation with Intrinsic Sensingcited by 11
  12. 2020Frequency-based Search-control in Dynacited by 7
  13. 2023TactoFind: A Tactile Only System for Object Retrievalcited by 5
  14. 2017Fundamental Limitations in Performance and Interpretability of Common Planar Rigid-Body Contact Modelscited by 2

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 1; 2024: 2; 2025: 3; 2026: 5.

11 papers.

  1. 2023General In-Hand Object Rotation with Vision and Touchcited by 99
  2. 2024Robo-ABC: Affordance Generalization Beyond Categories via Semantic Correspondence for Robot Manipulationcited by 71
  3. 2024HyperTaxel: Hyper-Resolution for Taxel-Based Tactile Signals Through Contrastive Learningcited by 6
  4. 2025V-HOP: Visuo-Haptic 6D Object Pose Trackingcited by 5
  5. 2025ViTa-Zero: Zero-shot Visuotactile Object 6D Pose Estimationcited by 3
  6. 2026MoRI: Mixture of RL and IL Experts for Long-Horizon Manipulation Taskscited by 1
  7. 2026Learning Physical Interaction: A Survey of Tactile- and Force-aware Robot Learningcited by 1
  8. 2025Neural Cellular Automata for Decentralized Sensing using a Soft Inductive Sensor Array for Distributed Manipulator Systemscited by 0
  9. 2026ArrayTac: A Closed-loop Piezoelectric Tactile Platform for Continuously Tunable Rendering of Shape, Stiffness, and Frictioncited by 0
  10. 2026Tac2Pix: Image-Space Visuo-Tactile Fusion for Dexterous Manipulationcited by 0
  11. 2026Distributed Dexterous Manipulation with Spatially Conditioned Multi-Agent Transformerscited by 0