Residual RL-MPC for Robust Microrobotic Cell Pushing Under Time-Varying Flow
Contact-rich micromanipulation in microfluidic flow is challenging because small disturbances can break pushing contact and induce large lateral drift. We study planar cell pushing with a magnetic rolling microrobot that tracks a waypoint-sampled reference curve under time-varying Poiseuille flow in simulation. We propose a hybrid controller that augments a nominal MPC with a learned residual policy trained by SAC. The policy outputs a bounded 2D velocity correction that is contact-gated, so residual actions are applied only during robot-cell contact, preserving reliable approach behavior and stabilizing learning. All methods share the same actuation interface and speed envelope for fair ...
| Authors | Yanda Yang, Sambeeta Das |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.RO |
| Published | 5 March 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 24 June 2026 |
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