Zero-shot force-aware robot manipulation: video plus audio enable safer contact tasks
A method uses generated video and synchronized audio to shape commanded forces during contact, testing on real robots.
- Publication
- arXiv
- Stage
- Preprint
- What we read
- Summary of the paper
- Authors
- Guanhua Ji, Tianyu Li, Dayoon Suh, Yuqian Zhang, Boyan Zhang, Nadia Figueroa
- Universities and research institutions
- Not yet supplied in verified metadata; the Brief does not guess.
What they did and found
Researchers used a video-and-audio generator to create force-aware robot trajectories. They mapped audio loudness to bounded force profiles and executed them with a force regulator, demonstrating improved success over purely kinematic replay on several contact tasks.
Why it matters
Shows that adding audio-based force cues can help robots handle contact better without relying on force sensors in every demonstration.
The approach builds end-to-end control from generated media, letting a robot guess when and how hard to push during a task. By damping abrupt force starts and using closed-loop regulation, it reduces failures tied to sudden contacts.
In practice, this means you can try force-aware planning with existing video-to-action pipelines, recognizing that sound can hint at optimal contact intensity and timing, even without direct force data from demonstrations.
Original sources · 1
- Dreaming the Sound of Contact: Leveraging Video and Audio Generation for Zero-Shot Force-Aware Manipulation and Data Generation ↗arXiv · 2026-09-16
Check the original paper for its authors, methods, version and access terms.
What remains uncertain
Audio cues may include unrelated sounds; the force profile is a proxy, not a guarantee of optimal real-world force.
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