Exploring the Role of Energy in Robot Learning and Control

Energy principles have long played a central role in physics and engineering, offering powerful tools for modeling and controlling dynamical systems. In robotics, they enable stable and robust interactions in uncertain environments and support the analysis and interpretability of control actions. However, energy also provides a natural interface between control theory and AI, unifying physical structure with data-driven flexibility. As robots increasingly operate in complex, unstructured settings, learning-based control methods have gained traction for their adaptability, but they often lack formal safety guarantees, require large datasets, and are difficult to interpret. Energy-based methods offer a promising alternative by embedding physical structure into control and learning architectures. They provide a modular, interpretable way to model and regulate energy flow across subsystems, which is particularly valuable for physical interactions. Their compatibility with learning and optimization techniques makes them a compelling foundation for building safer, more efficient, and more generalizable robotic systems.This Research Topic aims to encourage papers that explore or advance the integration of energy-based principles into robotic learning and control, creating energy-informed robotic systems. The goal is to bring together in a single special issue the most novel works that combine the robustness and formal guarantees of energy-based control with the adaptability of learning-based approaches. By leveraging the strengths of both paradigms, this integration can lead to a new generation of controllers that are more efficient and generalizable, while still ensuring safety. For this reason, we welcome submissions addressing current challenges, presenting novel methodologies, and demonstrating real-world applications of energy-based approaches. We also aim to highlight future research directions and technologies that can leverage energy concepts to improve robustness, efficiency, interpretability, and safety in autonomous robotics. This Research Topic will serve as a starting point for anyone interested in applying AI techniques within energy-based control frameworks.We encourage submissions of any article type that address the role of energy principles in robotic control and learning, including but not limited to the following topics: - Passivity-Based Control for AI - Virtual Energy Tanks - Time-Domain Passivity Control - Port-Based Modeling and Port-Hamiltonian Theory - Mechanical Energy and Power Flow Analysis and Regulation - Passivity Analysis and Passivization of Robot Control Schemes - Energy and Power-based Metrics for Safe Robot Interaction - Physics-Informed Machine Learning with Energy Priors - Lagrangian, Hamiltonian and Port-Hamiltonian Neural Networks - Integration of Machine Learning and Port-Hamiltonian Theory - Reinforcement Learning with Energy-Based Policies This Research Topic is related to the workshop of the same name at the 2025 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) conference, held at the 2025 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) in Hangzhou, China. Topic editors: Riccardo Zanella, Pierluigi Arpenti, Andrea Pupa, Stefano Stramigioli, Cristian Secchi Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/74072/exploring-the-role-of-energy-in-robot-learning-and-control