# ArrayBot: Reinforcement Learning for Generalizable Distributed Manipulation through Touch

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.16857 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16857/

## 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 (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Soft Actor-Critic: Off-Policy Maximum Entropy Deep Reinforcement Learning with a Stochastic Actor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01290/) (2018)
- [Continuous control with deep reinforcement learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.02971/) (2015)
- [Domain Randomization for Transferring Deep Neural Networks from Simulation to the Real World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06907/) (2017)
- [Isaac Gym: High Performance GPU-Based Physics Simulation For Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10470/) (2021)
- [Learning Dexterous In-Hand Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.00177/) (2018)
- [Sim-to-Real Transfer of Robotic Control with Dynamics Randomization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.06537/) (2017)
- [Real-World Robot Learning with Masked Visual Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03109/) (2022)
- [Neural Descriptor Fields: SE(3)-Equivariant Object Representations for Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05124/) (2021)
- [Learning in the Frequency Domain](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12416/) (2020)
- [A Review of Robot Learning for Manipulation: Challenges, Representations, and Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.03146/) (2019)
- [Rotating without Seeing: Towards In-hand Dexterity through Touch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10880/) (2023)
- [You Only Demonstrate Once: Category-Level Manipulation from Single Visual Demonstration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12716/) (2022)
- [Dexterity from Touch: Self-Supervised Pre-Training of Tactile Representations with Robotic Play](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12076/) (2023)
- [EGAD! an Evolved Grasping Analysis Dataset for diversity and reproducibility in robotic manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01314/) (2020)
- [Sample Efficient Grasp Learning Using Equivariant Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09468/) (2022)
- [SORNet: Spatial Object-Centric Representations for Sequential Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.03891/) (2021)
- [Learning Frequency Domain Approximation for Binary Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00841/) (2021)
- [Augmenting Physical Simulators with Stochastic Neural Networks: Case Study of Planar Pushing and Bouncing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.03246/) (2018)
- [Learning to Grasp the Ungraspable with Emergent Extrinsic Dexterity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.01500/) (2022)
- [Skeleton Merger: an Unsupervised Aligned Keypoint Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10814/) (2021)
- [USEEK: Unsupervised SE(3)-Equivariant 3D Keypoints for Generalizable Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13864/) (2022)
- [On the Feasibility of Learning Finger-gaiting In-hand Manipulation with Intrinsic Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.12720/) (2021)
- [Frequency-based Search-control in Dyna](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05822/) (2020)
- [TactoFind: A Tactile Only System for Object Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13482/) (2023)
- [Fundamental Limitations in Performance and Interpretability of Common Planar Rigid-Body Contact Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.04979/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [General In-Hand Object Rotation with Vision and Touch](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09979/) (2023)
- [Robo-ABC: Affordance Generalization Beyond Categories via Semantic Correspondence for Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07487/) (2024)
- [HyperTaxel: Hyper-Resolution for Taxel-Based Tactile Signals Through Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.08312/) (2024)
- [V-HOP: Visuo-Haptic 6D Object Pose Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17434/) (2025)
- [ViTa-Zero: Zero-shot Visuotactile Object 6D Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13179/) (2025)
- [MoRI: Mixture of RL and IL Experts for Long-Horizon Manipulation Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.10165/) (2026)
- [Learning Physical Interaction: A Survey of Tactile- and Force-aware Robot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.07558/) (2026)
- [Neural Cellular Automata for Decentralized Sensing using a Soft Inductive Sensor Array for Distributed Manipulator Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.01242/) (2025)
- [ArrayTac: A Closed-loop Piezoelectric Tactile Platform for Continuously Tunable Rendering of Shape, Stiffness, and Friction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13829/) (2026)
- [Tac2Pix: Image-Space Visuo-Tactile Fusion for Dexterous Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.08765/) (2026)
- [Distributed Dexterous Manipulation with Spatially Conditioned Multi-Agent Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.06930/) (2026)

## 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.