A robot, which may accurately detect whether or not the robot is gripping an object, even without a tactile sensor, as a result of using a sorter that utilizes a torque generated from a joint of a hand and the shape of the hand as feature data, and a control method for the robot includes a state sensing unit to sense a state of the robot, a feature vector producing unit to extract feature data from the state sensing unit and to produce a feature vector using the feature data, and a learning-based data sorter to judge an operating state of the robot using the feature vector produced by the feature vector producing unit and to output the judged result.