Humanoid Robot Locomotion

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Overview

The field aims to make humanoids move safely and efficiently while maintaining balance on flat ground, stairs, slopes, gaps, and cluttered paths. Controllers range from model-based methods such as model predictive control and footstep planning to reinforcement learning, often combined with motion-capture priors, terrain perception, or mixtures of specialist skills. Researchers test these approaches in simulation and on platforms such as Unitree G1 and Digit, with tasks including stepping stones, parkour, running, and push recovery. A central challenge is building policies that generalize across terrain, sensing failures, and real-world dynamics without sacrificing stability, efficiency, or natural movement.

Latest papers

CardsList

146 papers25 papers in the last four weeks, down 14% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. FORGE: Feasible Online Reduced-Order Reference Generation and Whole-Body Execution for Agile Humanoid Locomotion

    Oct 27, 2026Adrian B. Ghansah, Yujin An, Jeeseop Kim +1Humanoid Robot LocomotionHumanoid Robot Control

    A. B. Ghansah, and S. J. Chung are with the Department of Control and Dynamical Systems, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA · Y. An is with the Department of Bioengineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA · J. Kim is with the Dept. of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at El Paso, TX 79968, USA

  2. HC2Robot: Hyper-Connection Transformers with Predicted Foresight for Multi-Terrain Humanoid Parkour

    Oct 27, 2026Wenhao Xu, Yanheng Mai, Yifei Fu +6Humanoid Robot LocomotionTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · CLAI-LAB, CL-TECH · South China Agricultural University +1

  3. REACH: An RL-based Hierarchical Humanoid Crawling Framework for Adaptable Confined Space Traversal

    Oct 27, 2026Shengzhang Xu, Yuning Guo, Weiyi Hu +3Humanoid Robot LocomotionRL for Legged Locomotion

    Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China · Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

  4. GRAFT: Geometry-Aware Residual Adaptation for Foundation Trackers

    Oct 27, 2026Liang Li, Guoyao Zhang, Xingyu Chen +6Humanoid Robot LocomotionTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    Xiaomi Robotics Lab. · HKUST(Guangzhou).

  5. Humanoid Mobility via Attention-based Contacts

    Oct 22, 2026Junzhe He, Kehan Wen, Chong Zhang +7Humanoid Robot LocomotionTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland. · Previously at 1, now at Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore. · ETH AI Center +2

  6. MPBRS: Multi-Potential-Based Reward Shaping for Unified Reward Configuration in Humanoid Locomotion

    Oct 21, 2026Van Chung Nguyen, Hung Manh LaReward ShapingReward Design for RL

    are with the Advanced Robotics and Automation (ARA) Lab, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557, USA.

  7. Do Earth-Trained Humanoid Controllers Walk on the Moon? Gravity, Terrain, and Soil Transfer

    Oct 21, 2026Guillem Casadesus Vila, Sri Aditya Deevi, Grace X. GaoHumanoid Robot LocomotionLegged Robotics

    Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA

  8. Watch Your Step: Anticipated Perception for Humanoid Locomotion

    Oct 21, 2026Matthias Heyrman, Chenhao Li, Ioannis Dadiotis +1Humanoid Robot LocomotionTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    Robotic Systems Laboratory, ETH Zürich, Switzerland. · ETH AI Center, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.

  9. Adaptive Traversal Tubes for Posture-Aware Navigation of Bipedal Humanoids

    Oct 20, 2026Zijian GeRobot NavigationSocial Robot Navigation

  10. Validation of Human Motor Development Scales with Humanoid Robots

    Oct 19, 2026Fanxing Meng, Jing XiaoRoboticsRobot Skill Learning

    Robotics Engineering Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA

  11. Contact-UAN: Unsupervised Actuator Networks as a Residual World Model for Humanoid Control

    Oct 13, 2026Nolan Fey, Khai Nguyen, Yash Prabhu +2Humanoid Robot ControlHumanoid Robot Locomotion

    Improbable AI Lab, MIT

  12. Walk Like This: Stylized Locomotion for Physics-Based Characters through Example-Driven Diffusion

    Oct 13, 2026Joshua Aurand, Agon Serifi, Sammy Christen +4Style-Conditioned Motion GenerationRobot Locomotion

    Disney Research Zürich, Switzerland · ETH Zürich, Switzerland

  13. LiDAR-based Humanoid Navigation in Dynamic, Non-Convex Environments via Spatio-Temporal Safe Corridors

    Oct 12, 2026Shubham S. Kumbhar, Panagiotis ArtemiadisRobot NavigationSafe Motion Planning

    the Mechanical Engineering Department, at the University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA

  14. Design and Analysis of a Nonlinear Parallel Mechanism Coupling for Dynamic Humanoid Legs

    Oct 12, 2026Rohit Kumar, Heiner Peters, Felix Wiebe +5Legged RoboticsHumanoid Robot Locomotion

    Robotics Innovation Center, DFKI GmbH, 28359 Bremen, Germany. · AG Robotik, University of Bremen, 28359 Bremen, Germany.

  15. Geometry-Aware Predictive Control for Walk-to-Run Bipedal Obstacle Crossing

    Oct 11, 2026Aashish Sahu, R. Prasanth KumarHumanoid Robot LocomotionModel Predictive Control

    Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India

  16. Modeling and Control of a Rigid-soft Hybrid-link Humanoid Robot

    Oct 10, 2026Zewen He, Taiki Ishigaki, Ko YamamotoHumanoid Robot ControlRobotic Control

    Department of Mechano-informatics, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo Bunkyo-ku, 113-8656, Tokyo, Japan

  17. Push the Limit: Learning High-Speed Sprinting and Aggressive Cornering on a Full-Scale Humanoid

    Oct 10, 2026Huaxing Huang, Ruidong Li, Jinchao Han +2Adversarial Motion PriorCompliant Legged Locomotion

    Noetix Robotics · Tsinghua University

  18. DAMP: Humanoid Locomotion via Denoised Belief Learning and Adversarial Motion Priors

    Oct 8, 2026Puying Shen, Wenhao Cui, Huaxing Huang +4Adversarial Motion PriorHumanoid Robot Locomotion

    School of Control Science and Engineering, Shandong University. · Shandong Key Laboratory of Humanoid Robotics.

  19. HuMBLE: Human Motion-Driven Behavior Learning for Embodied Locomotion

    Oct 7, 2026Mike Zhang, Dongho Kang, Kevin Bergamin +19Human-to-Robot Motion ImitationHumanoid Robot Locomotion

    RAI Institute, USA · Boston Dynamics, USA · Carnegie Mellon University, USA

  20. PhoneBot: A Low-Cost Open Humanoid Robot Platform Reusing Smartphones

    Oct 6, 2026Ruochen Hou, Quanyou Wang, Daniel Koh +1Humanoid Robot LocomotionRobotics

    Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa), Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.

  21. Model-Based Geometry-Aware Generative Optimization for Constrained Locomotion Planning

    Oct 6, 2026Zhilin He, Xinyuan Wang, Changliu LiuConstrained Generative ModelingConstrained Motion Planning

    Carnegie Mellon University · University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

  22. What the Elevation Map Cannot See: Semantic-Aware Locomotion and Execution-Aware Navigation for Humanoid Robot

    Oct 5, 2026Shunyu Yao, Songyang Liu, Dinghao Chen +2Humanoid Robot LocomotionRobot Navigation

    Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure & Environment, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA · Independent researcher · Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA

  23. CoDance: Learning Reactive and Compliant Human-Humanoid Interaction from Video

    Oct 4, 2026Zhuoqun Chen, Shucheng Jia, Boyuan ChenRobotic ControlCompliant Robot Control

    Duke University

  24. Humanoid Rickshaw Pulling: Whole-Body Locomotion under Coupled Wheeled Loads

    Oct 3, 2026Yangzhi Yang, Xiansheng Lin, Zhaoming Xie +1Humanoid Robot ControlHumanoid Robot Locomotion

    Legged AI Lab, Shanghai Innovation Institute

  25. Reactive Humanoid Multi-Contact Using Learned Stability Models

    Sep 30, 2026Stephen McCrory, Beomyeong Park, Nicholas Kitchel +2Humanoid Robot LocomotionHumanoid Robot Control

    Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition · University of West Florida

  26. Locomotion-Grounded Humanoid Soccer: Task-Gated Reinforcement Learning of a Multi-Directional Kicking Library

    Sep 30, 2026Abu Hanif Muhammad Syarubany, Jaehyun Jang, Hwanhee Kim +3Humanoid Robot LocomotionRobot Skill Learning

    School of Electrical Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

  27. Dense Temporal Motion Retargeting for Legged Robots

    Sep 29, 2026Jaeryeong Kim, Taerim Yoon, Jin Cheng +2Legged RoboticsHumanoid Robot Locomotion

    Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, Wasserwerkstrasse 12, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

  28. Passive-Dynamic-Walking-Inspired Dynamics Guidance for Energy-Efficient Humanoid Locomotion

    Sep 28, 2026Hyeonjin Choi, Joongheon Kim, Daekyum KimHumanoid Robot LocomotionReinforcement Learning

    School of Mechanical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea · School of Electrical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea · School of Smart Mobility, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea

  29. Model-Informed Safe Reinforcement Learning for Bipedal Locomotion via Step-to-Step Prediction

    Sep 28, 2026Victor Paredes, Ayonga HereidHumanoid Robot LocomotionControl Barrier Functions

    Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA.

  30. Multi-Terrain Mastery: A Comprehensive Controller for Bipedal Locomotion

    Sep 27, 2026Oluwami Dosunmu-Ogunbi, Aayushi ShrivastavaRobot LocomotionLegged Robotics

    Mechanical Engineering Department Ohio Northern University Ada, United States of America · Mechanical Engineering Department University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, United States of America