On the Numerical Reliability of Differentiable Physics-Based Optimization for Robotic Material Manipulation

Abstract

Differentiable physics is increasingly used in robotic material manipulation for system identification, trajectory or skill optimization, demonstration generation, and robot or end-effector design. These applications depend on gradients propagated through long, contact-rich simulation rollouts. We study the numerical reliability of those gradients using two Material Point Method (MPM) system-identification benchmarks derived from elastoplastic and granular manipulation. The benchmarks provide controlled cases for three effects that also arise in broader differentiable physics-based optimization. GPU many-to-one sums whose order depends on thread scheduling changed long-horizon gradients and reversed the sign of one parameter gradient relative to a deterministic reference. Finite-difference checks became less reliable for longer rollouts because repeated-run loss variation grew much faster than the loss change produced by the tested parameter perturbations. Observation and loss definitions changed optimization behaviour and the solution preferred by an independent metric. These results motivate reproducible accumulation, finite-difference validation that compares perturbation-induced loss changes with repeated-run variation, and explicit reporting of objective construction when differentiable simulation is used for robotic optimization.