Below are selected papers that represent our main research threads. Please visit Publications for the full list.
Contact-rich intelligence
ComFree-Sim preview
ComFree-Sim: A GPU-Parallelized Analytical Contact Physics Engine for Scalable Contact-Rich Robotics Simulation and Control
Chetan Borse, Zhixian Xie, Wei-Cheng Huang, Wanxin Jin
arXiv, 2026
Paper Webpage Documentation Video
ComFree-MPC preview
Complementarity-Free Multi-Contact Modeling and Optimization for Dexterous Manipulation
Wanxin Jin
Robotics: Science and Systems (RSS), 2025
Paper Code Video
Contact planning preview
Where to Touch, How to Contact: Hierarchical RL-MPC Framework for Geometry-Aware Long-Horizon Dexterous Manipulation
Zhixian Xie, Yu Xiang, Michael Posa, Wanxin Jin
arXiv, 2026
Paper Webpage Video
ContactSDF preview
ContactSDF: Signed Distance Functions as Multi-Contact Models for Dexterous Manipulation
Wen Yang, Wanxin Jin
IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L), 2025
Paper Webpage Code Video
TwinTrack preview
TwinTrack: Bridging Vision and Contact Physics for Real-Time Tracking of Unknown Objects in Contact-Rich Scenes
Wen Yang, Zhixian Xie, Yiting Wang, Abhijit Tadepalli, Heni Ben Amor, Shan Lin, Wanxin Jin
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2026
Paper Webpage Video
ComFress sliding preview Cartpole demo preview
Other Selected Papers
  • Task-Driven Hybrid Model Reduction for Dexterous Manipulation
    Wanxin Jin, Michael Posa. IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2024.
  • Adaptive Contact-Implicit Model Predictive Control with Online Residual Learning
    Wei-Cheng Huang, Alp Aydinoglu, Wanxin Jin, Michael Posa. IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2024.
  • Adaptive Barrier Smoothing for First-Order Policy Gradient with Contact Dynamics
    Shenao Zhang, Wanxin Jin, Zhaoran Wang. International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2023.

Learning from humans
Safe MPC alignment preview
Safe MPC Alignment with Human Directional Feedback
Zhixian Xie, Wenlong Zhang, Yi Ren, Zhaoran Wang, George J. Pappas, Wanxin Jin
IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2026
Paper Code Video Project
Robust reward alignment preview
Robust Reward Alignment via Hypothesis Space Batch Cutting
Zhixian Xie, Haode Zhang, Yizhe Feng, Wanxin Jin
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2025
Paper Webpage Code
Language-model-assisted reward learning preview
Language-Model-Assisted Bi-Level Programming for Reward Learning from Internet Videos
Harsh Mahesheka, Zhixian Xie, Zhaoran Wang, Wanxin Jin
Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) Workshop on Language and Robot Learning, 2024
Paper Video
Learning from human directional corrections preview
Learning from Human Directional Corrections
Wanxin Jin, Todd D Murphey, Zehui Lu, Shaoshuai Mou
IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2023
Paper Code Video
Learning from sparse demonstrations preview
Learning from Sparse Demonstrations
Wanxin Jin, Todd D Murphey, Dana Kulic, Neta Ezer, Shaoshuai Mou
IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2023
Paper Code Video
Learning from incomplete demonstrations preview
Inverse Optimal Control from Incomplete Trajectory Observations
Wanxin Jin, Dana Kulic, Shaoshuai Mou, Sandra Hirche
International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 2021
Paper Code
Inverse Optimal Control for Multiphase Cost Functions
Wanxin Jin, Dana Kulic, Jonathan Lin, Shaoshuai Mou, Sandra Hirche
IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2019
Paper Code

Differentiable optimal control and safe learning
Pontryagin Differentiable Programming preview
Pontryagin Differentiable Programming: An End-to-End Learning and Control Framework
Wanxin Jin, Zhaoran Wang, Zhuoran Yang, Shaoshuai Mou
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2020
Paper Code Project
Safe Pontryagin Differentiable Programming preview
Safe Pontryagin Differentiable Programming
Wanxin Jin, Shaoshuai Mou, George J. Pappas
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), 2021
Paper Code Project
Differential dynamic programming inverse reinforcement learning preview
A Differential Dynamic Programming Framework for Inverse Reinforcement Learning
Kun Cao, Xinhang Xu, Wanxin Jin, Karl H. Johansson, Lihua Xie
IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO), 2025
Paper
Soft barriers safe reinforcement learning preview
Enforcing Hard Constraints with Soft Barriers: Safe-driven Reinforcement Learning in Unknown Stochastic Environments
Yixuan Wang, Simon Sinong Zhan, Ruochen Jiao, Zhilu Wang, Wanxin Jin, Zhuoran Yang, Zhaoran Wang, Chao Huang, Qi Zhu
International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), 2023
Paper