Four research papers from the Intelligent Space Robotics Laboratory at Skoltech’s Center for Engineering Systems and Sciences have been accepted for the IROS 2026 international conference (IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, A-rated, Core Rank), which will be held in Pittsburgh (U.S.).

The papers cover various tasks in which robots need to “think” and adapt:

CognitiveDrone — a drone that understands natural language commands and reasons about its environment (77% success rate, 2.5× better than prior methods);

VersualRL — a robot learns complex tasks through "conversation" with a system that suggests improvements based on video feedback, without complex mathematical tuning; 

HapticVLA — a robotic hand manipulates objects delicately without real-time touch sensors (87% success, outperforming systems with tactile feedback);

Action Agent — a system first "imagines" a robot's path as a video, then converts it into movement commands for a humanoid robot (65% success in unseen environments).