Real-World Deployment of Massively Parallel Sampling-Based MPC for Contact-Rich Manipulation

Magnus Dierking, Joao Carvalho, An Thai Le, Georgia Chalvatzaki, Jan Peters

Keywords: sampling-based MPC, model tensor planning, contact-rich manipulation, sim-to-real, domain randomization

Abstract:

Sampling-based Model Predictive Control (SMPC) is a promising strategy for contact-rich robotic manipulation, combining gradient-free optimization with massively parallel GPU simulation. Yet, most prior work relies on simplified dynamics or remains confined to simulation.

We present an MPC framework that leverages JAX for large-scale parallelization and efficient computation, coupled with the high-fidelity MuJoCo MJX simulator, and deploy it on a Franka Research 3 executing the Push-T manipulation task through a complete real-to-sim-to-real pipeline. The MTP variant with structured global sampling outperforms unimodal baselines such as CEM, MPPI, and PS across tasks that require mode switching, both in simulation and on hardware. Furthermore, we evaluate online domain randomization within the MPC sample budget, showing that contact-initiation parameters yield interpretable adaptation signals, whereas global physics parameters provide feedback that is too weak for reliable exploitation at typical replanning frequencies. These findings highlight key challenges for sampling-based MPC in contact-rich manipulation—contact sensitivity, tight compute budgets, and the difficulty of obtaining informative domain-randomization signals in real time.

Submission Number: 32