Reproducible Benchmarking of Robotic Grasping and Manipulation:

From Advanced AI to Generalized Humanoid Intelligence

______________

27th September 2026, 13:30 - 17:30 am (local time)

at the 2026 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems

PITTSBURGH, PA, USA

Summary

Advances in robotics, perception, and AI are raising expectations for robots to achieve high-level capabilities that enable them to autonomously, accurately, and robustly perform complex manipulation tasks. These include autonomous assembly and disassembly, in-hand manipulation, heterogeneous object picking in cluttered environments, and human–robot collaboration. Despite significant research efforts over the past decades, many of these crucial capabilities remain far from solved. Most existing solutions are demonstrated through custom pipelines and validation procedures developed within individual laboratories, often relying on different sensing modalities, workflows, and evaluation criteria. As a result, it is difficult to fairly compare approaches or reproduce results across research groups. Benchmarking, therefore, plays a critical role in enabling reproducibility, transparent evaluation, and meaningful comparison of different methods, ultimately accelerating progress in challenging robotic manipulation problems. This workshop aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and stakeholders from academia, industry, and standardization organizations to discuss the current status, challenges, and future directions of reproducible benchmarking in autonomous robotic grasping and manipulation. Particular attention will be given to the growing interaction between research innovation and practical engineering solutions needed to develop efficient, robust, and trustworthy robotic systems that operate reliably in real-world environments outside the laboratory. The lessons learned from the workshop will provide insights into the evolution of grasping and manipulation research and will feed the development and deployment of humanoids and advanced artificial intelligence systems.

Invited Speakers

Kris Hauser
University of Illinois

and

Samsung Research America

Rika Antonova

University of Cambridge

Natasha Kholgade Banerjee

Wright State University

Kostas Bekris

Rutgers University

and

Amazon.com Inc

Russ Tedrake
MIT

and

Toyota Research Institute

TBD

Winners of the 11th Robotic Grasping and Manipulation Competition (RGMC) tracks at ICRA 2026 in Vienna

Wanhao Niu

Winning team
Picking in Clutter

Name Surname

Winning team
Human-to-robot handover

Name Surname

Winning team
Clour robotics

Calls for contributions

Submission deadlines are at 11.59 pm Anywhere on Earth.

30 June: submission open
25 August: Submission deadline for Extended Abstract (unpublished works)
7 September: Acceptance notification
10 September: Submission deadline for Abstracts of published works
14 September: Camera-ready due for Extended Abstracts
14 September: Acceptance notification (published works)
27 September: Workshop

Call for Extended Abstracts (unpublished works)

We invite interested authors to submit Extended Abstracts (2 pages) of ongoing or unpublished works.

Submitted extended abstracts will be peer-reviewed. Accepted abstracts will be posted on this website and can be presented during the poster session of the workshop.
The best extended abstract will have the chance to give a talk during the main event of the workshop.

Extended abstracts should be in the form of a single PDF in IROS format (LaTex or Word) and submitted via the Microsoft CMT platform (select Extended Abstract track):
https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/RGMCW2026/

Call for Abstracts (published works)

We invite interested authors of relevant, already peer-reviewed and published works to submit a title, abstract, and link to their journal article or conference paper for inclusion and presentation at our workshop.

Submitted works will be checked for fitting to the workshop via the Microsoft CMT platform (select Abstract track): https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/RGMCW2026/

Accepted abstracts and published works can be presented during the poster session of the workshop.

Topics of interest

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Grasping
Manipulation
Datasets related to robotic manipulation and grasping
Learning grasping and manipulation from datasets
Human-to-robot handovers
Performance metrics and benchmarks
Competitions for pick-and-place in logistics, daily living manipulation, manufacturing

Program (local time)

13:30 - 13:40 Welcome and introduction

Salvatore D'Avella/Yu Sun

[Session 1] Human-to-Robot Handover

13:40 - 13:55 Enhancing AI for Automation and Robotics Through Awareness of Human-Object Interactions

Natasha K. Banerjee, Wright State University (USA)

13:55 - 14:05 TBD

Name Surname, Affiliation

Representative of the winning team for the 2026 ICRA RGMC - Human-to-robot handover track

14:05- 14:10 Q&A

[Session 2] Grasping Heterogeneous Objects In Cluttered Environments

14:10 - 14:25 TBD

Kostas Bekris, Rutgers University and Amazon Robotics

14:25 - 14:35 TBD

Xiang Li, Tsinghua University

Representative of the winning team for the 2026 ICRA RGMC - Picking in Clutter track

14:35 - 14:40 Q&A

[Session 3] Cloud Robotics

14:40 - 14:55 TBD

Name Surname, Affiliation

14:55 - 15:05 TBD

Name Surname, Affiliation

Representative of the winning team for the 2026 ICRA RGMC - Cloud Robotics track

15:05 - 15:10 Q&A

[Session 4] Best abstract and extended abstract

15:10 - 15:20 TBD

Authors

15:20 - 15:30 TBD

Authors

15:30 - 15:35 Q&A

15:30 - 16:00 Poster Session

[Session 5] Generative AI and Humanoids

16:00 - 16:15 TBD

Kris Hauser, Samsung Research America

16:15 - 16:30 TBD

Rika Antonova, University of Cambridge

16:30 - 16:45 TBD

Name Surname, Affiliation

16:45 - 16:50 Q&A

16:50 - 17:30 Panel Discussion

Salvatore D'Avella/Yu Sun

17:30 End

Workshop organizers

Salvatore D'Avella

Assistant Professor

Alessio Xompero

Indipendent Researcher

Changjae Oh

Lecturer

Andrea Cavallaro

Full Professor

Florian T. Pokorny

Assistant Professor

Omar Aboul-Enein

Computer Scientist

Yu Sun

Full Professor

Contact

For further questions please send an email to salvatore.davella@santannapisa.it

The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.

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