🎉 11 New Papers and a Patent in 2026 — ICRA, IROS, CDC, ICPR, IFAC, AIM, and More!

It’s been a great year for the group so far. Here’s a roundup of 11 new papers and a granted patent from the lab published or accepted in 2026, spanning robotics, manufacturing, and control venues.

• Alexander Tarvo, Yusen Wan, and Xu Chen. “Contrastive learning on 3D point clouds for robotic geometric defect detection”. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), June 2026. To appear.

• Zidong Liu, Kaixin Chang, and Xu Chen. “Clustering-embedded model predictive path integral control: avoiding averaging-induced failure and enabling efficient cluster selection for dynamic obstacles”. Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2026. To appear.

• Alexander Tarvo, Colin Acton, Yusen Wan, and Xu Chen. “The good, the bad, and the template: contrastive anomaly detection in 3D”. Proceedings of the International Conference on Pattern Recognition (ICPR), August 2026. To appear.

• Zidong Liu and Xu Chen. “CLIS-MPPI: closed-loop model predictive path integral control with initial-state sampling under execution delay”. Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC), 2026. To appear.

• Zidong Liu, Yusen Wan, Richard Lu, Amy Santoso, Xiaohai Hu, Thomas Chu, Tianyu Jiang, Guoxiao Guo, Takenori Atsumi, and Xu Chen. “PyHDD benchmark: a Python-based framework for magnetic-head positioning control systems in hard disk drives”. Proceedings of the 23rd IFAC World Congress, July 2026. To appear.

• Amy Santoso, Colin Acton, SangYoon Back, and Xu Chen. “Robotic autofocus algorithm for visual inspection in precision manufacturing using focus value and ratio-based velocity control”. Proceedings of the IEEE/ASME International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics (AIM), July 2026. To appear.

• Yusen Wan and Xu Chen. “iLSPR: a learning-based scene point-cloud registration method for robotic spatial awareness in intelligent manufacturing”. Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 99:103204, 2026, doi: 10.1016/j.jmsy.2026.09.006.

• Antara Banerjee, Colin Acton, and Xu Chen. “Perception-driven admittance-based surface alignment for robotic visual inspection”. Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 2026, doi: 10.1016/j.jmsy.2026.09.005.

• Yusen Wan, Zeyuan Chen, Qianshi Zou, and Xu Chen. “R-SLPR: region-based small-to-large point-cloud registration with contrastive learning”. Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 2026. In production.

• Xiaohai Hu, Zhengyang Xu, Thomas Chu, and Xu Chen. “Simultaneous continuous trajectory optimization for underactuated rehabilitation exoskeletons”. ASME Letters in Dynamic Systems and Control, 2026. To appear.

• Yusen Wan and Xu Chen. “iLSPR: Learning-Based Scene Point Cloud Registration for Robotic Manufacturing Systems”. Rising Star Presentation at 2026 Modeling, Estimation and Control Conference (MECC). To appear.

• Mark Gerges and Xu Chen. “Adaptive illuminance control”. US Patent 12,610,446 B2, 04/2026. UW reference 49201.03US2.

Way to go, team! More to come.