New England Manipulation Symposium (NEMS) 2026

Registration is free and includes lunch, coffee breaks, and an evening reception. All attendees are encouraged to register in advance so we can plan accordingly.

🤖 Registration link: https://forms.gle/ADLHSiJ3ySNSSrVT8 🤖

Keynote Speakers

Workshops

In the afternoon of day 2 of NEMS 2026, we will hold two workshop sessions: Workshop on Integration, Reproducibility, and Benchmarking of Robot Manipulation, and Workshop on Soft Robotics for Manipulation. See below for more information.

🤖 Workshop on Integration, Reproducibility, and Benchmarking of Robot Manipulation

Benchmarking robot manipulation capabilities and comparing research solutions is either performed at the component level or holistically. Physical evaluations typically involve the latter which requires a full robot manipulation system. However, researchers often contribute a single novel software component – such as a grasp planner or perception module – while integrating multiple open-source products as part of the manipulation pipeline. The high dimensionality of a robot manipulation system makes it difficult to determine what factors contributed to the resulting performance and reproduce experiments. A lack of standards and guidelines on component structures, input/output formats (for pipeline integration), and test and evaluation procedures to ensure compatibility and usability places a significant burden on researchers. This workshop seeks to unite the robot manipulation research community towards the development of guidelines to improve integration of software and hardware, reproducibility of functionality and results, and benchmarking for side-by-side comparison. 

• This workshop will consist of guided breakout discussions wherein each group is tasked with reviewing a set of recommendations developed as part of the COMPARE Ecosystem project (https://robot-manipulation.org/), iterating with their suggestions, and developing new guidelines. 

• All participants will be asked to identify the focus area of robot manipulation they are most interested in (e.g., perception, deformable object manipulation, grasp planning, in-hand manipulation). During breakout sessions, participants will be divided into groups of ~5-10 based on their selected focus areas. 

• The workshop will be split into two sessions with dedicated topics: (1) developing and integrating open-source, and (2) benchmarking robot manipulation.

• Each session will begin with 1-2 short talks to motivate discussion for the breakouts. These short talks will be selected from the NEMS submissions with significant contributions to either open-source (session 1) or benchmarking (session 2).

• The recommendations from COMPARE will be presented prior to each breakout, along with other motivating questions. A workshop facilitator will guide the discussion and take notes to present back to the larger workshop group.

🤖 Workshop on Soft Robotics for Manipulation

More information coming soon!

Accepted Short Talks with Posters

(in no particular order)

In-Hand Manipulation Planning for Grippers with Active Surfaces: Shambhuraj A. Mane, Berk Calli, Andrew S. Morgan; Worcester Polytechnic Institute and RAI Institute

Large and Fully Soft Suction Cup Arrays for Compliant and Preload-free Grasping: Qifan Yu, Kaitlyn Becker; Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Tendon-driven soft grasper with asymmetric actuation through a jamming mechanism: Paola Romero, Qifan Yu, Kait Becker; Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Clutter Metrics to Evaluate Multi-Object Scenes for Benchmarking Robot Grasping and Manipulation: John Brann, Peter Gavriel, Brian Flynn, Adam Norton, Holly Yanco; University of Massachusetts Lowell

DexWrist: A Robotic Wrist for Constrained and Dynamic Manipulation: Martin Peticco, Gabriella Ulloa, John Marangola, Nitish Dashora, Pulkit Agrawal; Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Toward Developing Guidelines for Modular Components in Robot Grasping and Manipulation Pipelines for Picking In Clutter: Huajing Zhao, Brian Flynn, Adam Norton, Holly Yanco; University of Massachusetts Lowell, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Friction Compensation on Force Feedback Teleoperation for Improved Operator Comfort: Boon Yang Koh, Samuel Hibbard, Ryo Takei, John P. Whitney; Northeastern University

Manipulation-Guided Object Reconstruction for Cluttered Environments: Eric Kevin Wang, Jungseok Hong, Pyae Sone Nyo Hmine, John J. Leonard; Massachusetts Institute of Technology

When Life Gives You BC, Make Q-functions: Extracting Q-values from Behavior Cloning for On-Robot Reinforcement Learning: Lakshita Dodeja, Ondrej Biza, Shivam Vats, Stephen Hart, Stefanie Tellex, Robin Walters, Karl Schmeckpeper, Thomas Weng; RAI Institute, Brown University, Northeastern University

Toward Stability Modeling for Underconstrained Loop Closure Grasping: Kentaro Barhydt, H. Harry Asada; Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Open-source Hardware: Vatsal Patel; Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Toward Learning Manipulation Skills from Human Intervention Timing: Anjiabei Wang, Shuangge Wang, Tesca Fitzgerald; Yale University

Learning Dynamic Rope Manipulation Using Task-Level Iterative Learning Control: Krishna Suresh, Chris Atkeson; Carnegie Mellon University

AURA: Asymptotically Optimal Uncertainty-Robust Replanning Algorithm for Kinodynamic Systems: Seyedali Golestaneh, Zhuoyun Zhong, Donghyung Lee, and Constantinos Chamzas; Worcester Polytechnic Institute 

Feature-Level Mixture-of-Experts for Robust Robotic Grasp Detection: Venkatesh Mullur, Vinayak Kapoor, Berk Calli; Worcester Polytechnic Institute 

Deliberate Practice: Learning Robot Skills under a Budget: Shivam Vats,  Sudarshan Sunil Harithas, Mete Tuluhan Akbulut,  Arvind Raghunathan, George Konidaris; Brown University, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories)

Accepted Posters

Posters will be 24" x 36", vertical or horizontal.

(in no particular order)

Demo-Optimal Dexterity: Scaling Visuomotor RL Post Training: Anoop Sonar, Pulkit Agrawal; Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Textile overmolding for increased design space of strain limiting features in soft robotic graspers: Cat Arase, Charlotte Folinus, Qifan Yu, Kaitlyn Becker; Massachusetts Institute of Technology

NiTi SMA-based Bio-inspired Underwater Soft Robot Locomotion for Pipeline Inspection: Savas Dilibal, Yavuz Sapmaz; Istanbul Gedik University

Loop closure grasping: Topological transformations enable strong, gentle, and versatile grasps: Kentaro Barhydt, O. Godson Osele, Sreela Kodali, Cosima du Pasquier, Chase M. Hartquist, H. Harry Asada, Allison M. Okamura; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, University of Florida

Robot Learning from Failed and Successful Demonstrations with Elastic Maps: Brendan Hertel, Reza Azadeh; University of Massachusetts Lowell

PhaseHand: An Underactuated 1-DOF Grasp Changing Robot Hand: Miracle Uwakwe, Yuri Gloumakov; University of Connecticut

Enhanced Reactive Intelligence: The Roles of Predictive Vector Fields and Non-Convex Optimization in Real-time Planning and Control: Riddhiman Laha; Northeastern University

Trajectory Generation for Underactuated Soft Robot Manipulators using Discrete Elastic Rod Dynamics: Beibei Liu, Akua K. Dickson, Ran Jing, Andrew P. Sabelhaus; Boston University

Hitting a Target with a Bullwhip: Simplified Representations for the Whip’s Dynamics: Aleksei Krotov, Dagmar Sternad; Northeastern University

Streamlined Object Reconstruction and Synthetic Data Generation for Perception and Manipulation: Peter Gavriel, Graham Stelzer, Adam Norton; University of Massachusetts Lowell

From Quasi-Static Point Contacts to Dynamic Patch Contacts using Non-Linear Complementarity Constraints: Haroon Hublikar, Riddhiman Laha, Seth Hutchinson; Northeastern University

Towards a unified inference framework for VLAs in the robotics field: Graham Stelzer; University of Massachusetts Lowell

Hybrid Image-Based Visual Servoing for Continuum Robot Manipulation: Eda Guven, Berk Calli; Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Divide, Discover, Master: Skill Discovery and Reuse from Multi-Stage Tasks via Segmentation and Recall: Andrea Pierré, Brendan Hertel, Reza Azadeh; University of Massachusetts Lowell

Path-Length Conservation with Adjustable Force Transmission in Voluntary-Open and Voluntary-Close Prosthetic Terminal Devices: Albert Gan, Miracle T. Uwakwe, Yuri Gloumakov; University of Connecticut

Real-Time Forearm Ultrasound for Gloveless Capture of Hand Skill and Grasping Force Toward a Wearable Input Modality for Robot Learning from Demonstration: Daniel Alvarengaa, Bimbraw Keshavb, Haichong K. Zhangb; Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Koopman-based Convex Control Parametrization for Soft Robotic Limbs: A Data-driven Approach: Ran Jing, Taha Ondogan, Roberto Tron, Andrew P. Sabelhaus; Boston University

Dynamic Modeling of Vibration-Induced Friction Modulation for Controlled Sliding in Robotic In-Hand Manipulation: Samruddhi Naukudkar, Shambhuraj Mane, Berk Calli; Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Autonomous Underwater Navigation and Manipulation using Yolov8 and Sonar: Elliot Stark, Eric Huynh, Nolan Allen, Paul Robinette; University of Massachusetts Lowell

A Trackball-Based Haptic Display for Characterizing Slip and Shear Rendering Performance: Philip LeShane, Ebenezer Yawlui, Yuri Gloumakov; University of Connecticut

Location

NEMS 2026 will be held at UMass Amherst in the Computer Sciences Laboratories (CSL) Building, located at 130 Governors Drive, Amherst, MA 01003.

Wi-Fi Access

Instructions from: https://www.umass.edu/it/get-connected#umass 

Campus guests can self-register via SMS to get wireless access.

1. Connect your device to the UMASS network and wait for the login page to appear. If a login page does not appear, open a web browser and go to umass.edu.

2. Under Guest Wireless Options, click Guest Self-Reg Form.

3. Follow the steps to enter your cellphone number to receive a PIN via text message.

4. Enter the PIN in the Access code box and accept the terms to get online. 

Parking

You can either park on the meters in Lot 31 or in the Campus Garage:

Sponsors

Contact

nems2026contact@gmail.com