What is NEMS?

NEMS is an annual research symposium in the Northeast focused on robotic manipulation research of all kinds, including mechanics, mechanisms, control, learning, perception, and planning. NEMS has two main goals. First, to provide an opportunity for members of the Northeast robotic manipulation research community to meet and talk in person, share ideas, and become familiar with each other’s work. Second, to provide students and early-career researchers a platform from which to present their latest work.

Call for Papers

The New England Manipulation Symposium (NEMS) invites submissions of abstracts for poster and oral presentations at our 2025 symposium, to be held on Friday, June 6, 2025, at the MIT Stata Center. This non-archival symposium welcomes submissions of both published and unpublished work. We are particularly interested in research related to robotic manipulation, including mechanisms, control, learning, perception, and planning.

Submissions will be reviewed for relevance and quality, and we aim to accept all valid submissions for poster presentation. A subset of submissions will be selected for short oral presentations. All attendees are encouraged to register in advance so we can plan accordingly. Submissions are due 5/12/2025

Each presentation will be allotted a 15-minute time slot (12 minutes plus 3 for questions). You will use your own laptop, and you should arrive 15 minutes before your session starts to ensure that it works properly.

For posters, we recommend you print a hard-backed 36"x24" poster. If needed, we will provide poster board and clips. We will provide easels for all accepted posters.

Schedule

Morning Session I

8:55 – 9:10
Welcome & Introduction
David Watkins (RAI), Lael Odhner (RAI), Kait Becker (MIT)
9:10 – 9:55
Keynote: Foundation Models for Robotic Manipulation: Opportunities and Challenges
Yunzhu Li – Columbia University
9:55 – 10:10
V-HOP: Visuo-Haptic 6D Object Pose Tracking
Hongyu Li – Brown University
10:10 – 10:25
Scalable Real2Sim: Physics-Aware Asset Generation via Robotic Pick-and-Place Setups
Nicholas Pfaff – MIT
10:25 – 10:40
Safe Autonomous Environmental Contact for Soft Robots using Control Barrier Functions
Akua K Dickson – Boston University
10:40 – 10:50
Sponsored Talk: RAI Institute
Title TBD
10:50 – 11:20
Coffee Break + Poster/Demo Session

Morning Session II

11:20 – 11:35
DEXOS: Hand Exoskeleton System for Teaching Robot Dexterous Manipulation In-The-Wild
Haoshu Fang – MIT
11:35 – 11:50
Streaming Flow Policy
Sunshine Jiang – MIT
11:50 – 12:05
Viscous Thread Printing for Custom Soft Robotic Manipulators
Jacob Miske – Northeastern
12:05 – 12:20
ManiFeel: Benchmarking Visuotactile Manipulation Policy Learning
Zhengtong Xu – Purdue
12:20 – 12:30
Sponsored Talk: Symbotic
Speaker: Ben Shih
12:30 – 1:15
Lunch + Poster/Demo Session

Afternoon Session I

1:15 – 1:30
AnySkin: Plug-and-play Skin Sensing for Robotic Touch
Raunaq Bhirangi – NYU
1:30 – 1:45
eFlesh: Highly customizable Magnetic Touch Sensing using Cut-Cell Microstructures
Venkatesh Pattabiraman – NYU
1:45 – 2:00
One-Shot Real-to-Sim via End-to-End Differentiable Simulation
Yifan Zhu – Yale
2:00 – 2:15
Hitting a target with a bullwhip: embodiment and simplification of flexible tools.
Aleksei Krotov - Northeastern
2:15 – 2:30
ActivePusher: Active Learning and Planning with Residual Physics for Nonprehensile Manipulation
Zhuoyun Zhong – WPI
2:30 – 3:15
Keynote: Dexterity First: Hands are the gateway to Humanoid Robotics
Pulkit Agrawal – MIT
3:15 – 3:45
Coffee Break + Poster/Demo Session

Afternoon Session II

3:45 – 4:00
Curating Non-Expert Demonstrations for Safer Imitation Learning
Noushad Sojib – UNH
4:00 – 4:15
Tetherless Soft Robotic Wearable Haptic HMI
Shilpa Thakur – WPI
4:15 – 4:30
Compact Stiffness Modulation Using Counter-Rotating Springs
Marc Bäckert – Harvard
4:30 – 4:45
ROAMHand3: A multi-finger robotic hand for contact-rich dexterous manipulation tasks
Zhanpeng He – Columbia
4:45 – 5:00
Towards Improving Open-Source and Benchmarking
Adam Norton – UMass Lowell
5:00 – 5:10
Closing Remarks
David Watkins (RAI), Lael Odhner (RAI), Kait Becker (MIT)

Accepted Posters

The New England Manipulation Symposium 2025 features 47 accepted poster. To improve accessibility and engagement, poster presenters are split across two interactive sessions: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Below is a list of the accepted posters along with their assigned session.

Morning Session

Afternoon Session

Registration

Registration for NEMS 2025 is now closed. Please contact the organizers if you have any questions.

Location

NEMS 2025 will take place at the MIT Stata Center, located at 32 Vassar St, Cambridge, MA 02139.

To get to the Stata center, please enter from either the east or west entrances, and navigate to the black star for conference registration.

Stata Registration Location, venue for NEMS 2025

For attendees looking to drive into the conference, we recommend parking at the Kendall Center Yellow Garage. The entrance for the Kendall Center Yellow Garage is on Ames Pl and the address is 75 Ames St, Cambridge, MA 02142.

Sponsors

RAI Institute Logo Symbotic Logo

Contact

For more information, please contact the NEMS 2025 organizers: