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Main Authors: Raicevic, Nikola, Radhakrishnan, Bharath Raam, Yu, Chenbin, Lee, Ki Myung Brian, Atanasov, Nikolay
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.30778
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author Raicevic, Nikola
Radhakrishnan, Bharath Raam
Yu, Chenbin
Lee, Ki Myung Brian
Atanasov, Nikolay
author_facet Raicevic, Nikola
Radhakrishnan, Bharath Raam
Yu, Chenbin
Lee, Ki Myung Brian
Atanasov, Nikolay
contents Long-horizon planning for non-prehensile robot manipulation is challenging due to underactuated and discontinuous interactions. We propose a hierarchical formulation of model predictive path integral (MPPI) control that guides robot-level planning with a separately computed object-level plan to achieve efficient long-horizon prediction. We first solve a simplified object-only problem, assuming the object can be actuated directly, and use the planned object trajectory as a reference in solving the joint robot-object planning problem. We evaluate our method in both simulation and hardware using a 6-DoF xArm6 manipulator to perform object pushing tasks in which the target object must reach a goal while avoiding static obstacles, necessitating non-myopic reasoning. Our object-informed MPPI increases task success by 40\% with a 26\% faster control frequency in simulation, and by 20\% in real experiments with similar computation as regular MPPI.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_30778
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Object-Informed Model Predictive Path Integral Control for Non-Prehensile Robot Manipulation
Raicevic, Nikola
Radhakrishnan, Bharath Raam
Yu, Chenbin
Lee, Ki Myung Brian
Atanasov, Nikolay
Robotics
Long-horizon planning for non-prehensile robot manipulation is challenging due to underactuated and discontinuous interactions. We propose a hierarchical formulation of model predictive path integral (MPPI) control that guides robot-level planning with a separately computed object-level plan to achieve efficient long-horizon prediction. We first solve a simplified object-only problem, assuming the object can be actuated directly, and use the planned object trajectory as a reference in solving the joint robot-object planning problem. We evaluate our method in both simulation and hardware using a 6-DoF xArm6 manipulator to perform object pushing tasks in which the target object must reach a goal while avoiding static obstacles, necessitating non-myopic reasoning. Our object-informed MPPI increases task success by 40\% with a 26\% faster control frequency in simulation, and by 20\% in real experiments with similar computation as regular MPPI.
title Object-Informed Model Predictive Path Integral Control for Non-Prehensile Robot Manipulation
topic Robotics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.30778