Topic 14 of 17

Hardware & morphology co-design in robotics

Hardware and morphology co-design treats the robot's body and its learning algorithm as one design problem rather than a sequence, since morphology determines what behaviors are learnable at all. Soft robots, reconfigurable platforms and actuation-as-sensing all belong here.

42papers in 2026-07

3.59%of all cs.RO that month

+0.48ppshare change, last 6 vs prior 12 months

24-month volume

arXiv query: cat:cs.RO AND (abs:"morphology" OR abs:"co-design" OR abs:"soft robot")

Presented at reading clubs

These already have a slide kit, so they are the fastest ones to pick up and present.

2025-12-31

Dream2Flow: Bridging Video Generation and Open-World Manipulation with 3D Object Flow

Karthik Dharmarajan, Wenlong Huang, Jiajun Wu +2 · 30 citations

club pickReinforcement learning & control Hardware & morphology co-design

2025-05-26

EgoZero: Robot Learning from Smart Glasses

Vincent Liu, Ademi Adeniji, Haotian Zhan +4 · 41 citations

club pickEgocentric & human data Data collection & teleoperation

Recent work

2026-09-09

Frame-Coded Legged Locomotion over Noisy Terrain

Lav R. Varshney

Humanoids & locomotion Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-09

Assembling Two Parts in One Hand

Liuao Pei, Tianyue Wu, Hui Zhang +2

CoRL 2026Dexterous manipulation Simulation, sim-to-real & benchmarks

2026-09-09

PccDiffuser: Multi-solution Motion Planning for Continuum Robots

Ke Qiu, Sifan Chen, Si Wang +3

Humanoids & locomotion Navigation & mobility

2026-09-09

MuJoCable: Reduced-Order Surface-Routed Cable Transmission for Tendon-Driven Robots

Yi Zhang, Qi Shao, Yicong Lin +3

Simulation, sim-to-real & benchmarks Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-08

Actuator Dynamics Curricula for Narrow-Viability Tasks in Legged Robot Learning

Kousheek Chakraborty, Chandan K. Rajendra, Ayham Alharbat +1

CoRL 2026Humanoids & locomotion Reinforcement learning & control

2026-09-08

Networked Admissibility-Preserving Control for Directed Safe Coordination

Abhinav Sinha, Lohitvel Gopikannan, Shashi Ranjan Kumar

Hardware & morphology co-design Safety & evaluation

2026-09-08

AccelMPC: High-Rate, Low-Power FPGA-Accelerated Model Predictive Control for Tiny Drones

Andrea Grillo, Brian Plancher

Reinforcement learning & control Navigation & mobility

2026-09-08

Visible-Reachable Workspace for Perception-Aware Humanoid Design

Boxi Xia, Zijiang Yang, Ryan Shin +5

Dexterous manipulation Humanoids & locomotion

2026-09-08

Real-time Puncture Detection and Recovery for Pneumatic Soft Actuators

Tejonidhi R. Deshpande, Tingyu Cheng, Josiah Hester

ICRA 2026Hardware & morphology co-design Safety & evaluation

2026-09-08

Multi-bounce Drum Roll with Optimized Active Tricks to Leverage Soft Embodiment

Naoto Yamanaka, Takanori Jin, Taisuke Kobayashi

Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-07

mjorbit: A Simulation Framework for Space Robotics

John Z. Zhang, Joris Verhagen, Fausto Vega +2

Reinforcement learning & control Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-07

ComVLA: Communication-Aware Split Inference for VLA Models in 6G-Connected Robotics

Boliang Liu, Wint Yi Poe, Jingyun Di +2

Vision-language-action Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-07

Wearable Multimodal Human-Machine Interface for Integrated Hand Intentions Decoding in Dynamic Teleoperation

Jiaxuan Li, Yinshi Wu, Xiao Zhang +4

Dexterous manipulation Data collection & teleoperation

2026-09-07

How Long Until Your Robot Ignores You? A Safety Benchmark for LLM Orchestrators in Human-Humanoid Collaboration

Aulon Bajrami, Mohamed Elshamouty, Werner Kraus

Humanoids & locomotion Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-07

Distributed Secure Learning Control for Large-scale Multirobots under Stealthy Actuator Attacks

Xinglong Zhang, Qingwen Ma, Cong Li +5

Reinforcement learning & control Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-05

FALCON-S: Fixed-wing ground-effect Aerodynamics Simulator and Flight Control Learning Suite

Matteo El Hariry, Pedro Lima, Andrej Orsula +2

Simulation, sim-to-real & benchmarks Reinforcement learning & control

2026-09-04

Morphology and actuation as inductive biases in robotic hand manipulation

Zalán Tari, Eszter Birtalan, Péter Polcz +1

Dexterous manipulation Reinforcement learning & control

2026-09-04

Strict Modes Everywhere - Bringing Order Into Dynamics of Mechanical Systems by a Potential Compatible With the Geodesic Flow

Arne Sachtler, Alin Albu-Schäffer

Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-03

A Multi-Vine Soft Robot Enabling Accessible Working Channel and Steering

Reza Kashef, Cem Suulker, Mohammad Sheikh Sofla +1

Navigation & mobility Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-03

QLAUN: A Research-Oriented, Robust, Agile, Modular, and Affordable Torque-Controlled Quadruped Robot

Mohamad S. Moudallal, Noel J. Maalouf

ICRA 2024Humanoids & locomotion Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-03

BRIDGE: An Open-Source Humanoid Platform via Morphology-Control Co-Design for Physical AI

Jianren Wang, Letian Qian, Zikai Wang +4

Humanoids & locomotion Data collection & teleoperation

2026-09-02

Real-Time Shape Control of Multi-Segment Soft Robotic Arms Using Koopman Operators with Global and Local Observables

Jiahe Wang, Eron Ristich, Sultan Haidar Ali +5

Reinforcement learning & control Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-02

Towards Effective Physical Reservoir Computing with a Pneumatic Soft Robot

Jeevan Hebbal Manjunath, Jun Wang, Suyi Li +1

Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-02

Unified Motion Retargeting for Humanoids with Learned Point Cloud Correspondence

Hanyang Cao, Yuetong Fang, Taesoo Kwon +10

Humanoids & locomotion 3D & spatial reasoning

2026-09-02

Design and Validation of a Lightweight, Low-Profile Powered Knee Prosthesis with Quasi-Direct Drive Actuation

Ross J. Cortino, Ryan Posh, Emily G. Keller +1

Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-01

A Compact Robotic Finger with 2-DoF MCP Joint Embedding DoF-Selective Passive Continuously Variable Transmission for Wide Force-Speed Operating Range

JaeHyung Jang, Jee-Hwan Ryu

Dexterous manipulation Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-01

One Print, Many Moves: Monolithic Origami-inspired Folding Actuator for Composable Soft Multi-DoF Systems

Jaehyung Jang, Zhenish Zhakypov, Jasmin Elena Palmer +3

Dexterous manipulation Data collection & teleoperation

2026-09-01

Behavior--Realization Separation for Constrained Physical Human--Robot Interaction

Yongyan Cao

Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-01

AM-Bench: A Modular Simulation Suite and Benchmark for Aerial Manipulation Policy Learning

Yutong Wang, Dongjae Lee, Xiaofeng Guo +9

Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-09-01

A Wearable Pneumatic Device for Continuous, Closed-Loop, Bidirectional Tactile Interaction

Cosima du Pasquier, Aliyah Smith, Serin Huber +5

Tactile & force sensing Data collection & teleoperation

2026-09-01

Exploring Nonlinear Body Oscillations for Natural Quadruped Gaits

Annika Schmidt, Davide Calzolari, Arne Sachtler +13

Humanoids & locomotion Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-08-31

A Dual-Cam Parallel Elastic Actuator with Shared Gas-Spring Compensation for Humanoid Ankles

Jingcheng Jiang, Yifang Zhang, Nikos G. Tsagarakis

Humanoids & locomotion Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-08-31

Learning to infer and manipulate through distributed whole-arm interaction in a soft robot

Chuhan Zhang, Ebrahim Shahabi, Kseniia Khomenko +2

Dexterous manipulation Simulation, sim-to-real & benchmarks

2026-08-30

Learning Agile Perceptive Traversal of Sparse 3D Structures for Humanoids

Efe Ongan, Chong Zhang, Boyang Sun +3

Humanoids & locomotion Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-08-30

Module Number Adaptive Visual Shape Control for Serial Modular Soft Robots

Kyohei Akamine, Takato Horii, Yusuke Sakaue +1

Humanoids & locomotion Data collection & teleoperation

2026-08-28

Aero Hand Open: A Simulation-Ready Tendon-Driven Hand for Dexterous Manipulation Learning

Nan Wang, Mohit Yadav, Jonathan Wulff +5

Dexterous manipulation Simulation, sim-to-real & benchmarks

2026-08-28

Stay Seated: Learning Omnidirectional Humanoid Locomotion on a Passive Mobile Chair with Casters

Kango Yanagida, Kazuki Miyazawa, Takato Horii

Humanoids & locomotion Simulation, sim-to-real & benchmarks

2026-08-28

CAVE-NAV: VLM-Based Autonomous 3D Navigation in Underwater Cave Environments

Zhenqi Wu, Yuanjie Lu, Yisheng Zhang +4

Navigation & mobility Hardware & morphology co-design

2026-08-27

RoboGesture: Real-Time Semantic-aligned Co-Speech Gestures Generation for Humanoid Interaction

Zifan Wang, Ziang Ren, Pengyang Shi +7

ECCV 2026Humanoids & locomotion Simulation, sim-to-real & benchmarks

2026-08-27

Remote Human and Robot Interaction for Greenhouse Gardening Using Virtual Reality

Daniel Udekwe, Hasan Seyyedhasani

Navigation & mobility Data collection & teleoperation

194 papers in this corpus carry the hardware & morphology co-design tag. How tagging works.