New England Manipulation Symposium (NEMS) 2026
- Date
- 2026-06-16
- Host
- MassRobotics
About this event
An annual research symposium in the Northeast focused on robot manipulation research of all kinds, including mechanics, mechanisms, control, learning, perception, and planning.
Who should attend
If you care about how robots physically interact with the world, this symposium is built for you. - You’re a **researcher, faculty member, postdoc, or graduate student** working in robot manipulation and want to hear how others are approaching the same core challenges from different angles. - Your work touches **mechanics, mechanisms, control, learning, perception, or planning**, and you want a venue where those areas are in conversation rather than siloed. - You’re looking for **serious technical discussion** with people who understand the realities of grasping, contact, uncertainty, hardware constraints, and real-world deployment. - You want to **share early ideas, compare methods, and get sharper feedback** from a Northeast research community focused on manipulation in all its forms. - You build systems in the lab and care about the full stack, from **end-effectors and physical design to policy learning and task-level reasoning**. - You’re a **robotics practitioner or advanced student** hoping to better understand where manipulation research is heading and to meet the people pushing that work forward in person.