Humanoid Robotics

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Overview

Humanoid robotics studies how to build and control human-shaped machines for tasks that combine walking, balance, manipulation, and interaction in spaces designed for people. Common approaches include model-based whole-body control and model-predictive control, reinforcement learning and motion imitation, and perception systems that use cameras, depth, touch, or proprioception. Human demonstrations, video, and simulation are increasingly used to train skills, while benchmarks test locomotion, object handling, collaboration, and social behavior. A central challenge is making skills learned in simulation or from demonstrations reliable under real-world contact, uncertainty, and disturbances, while evaluating safety and task success consistently.

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152 papers32 papers in the last four weeks, up 39% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. OmniHumanoid: Streaming Cross-Embodiment Video Generation with Paired-Free Adaptation

    May 12, 2026Yiren Song, Xiyao Deng, Pei Yang +2Unsupervised Domain AdaptationStreaming Video Generation

    Show Lab, National University of Singapore

  2. Mapping Embodied Affective Touch Strategies on a Humanoid Robot

    May 12, 2026Qiaoqiao Ren, Omar Eldardeer, Francesca Cocchella +3Human-Robot InteractionHumanoid Robotics

    Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, 1IDLab-AIRO, Ghent University – imec, Technologiepark 126, 9052 Gent, Belgium · School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology · COgNiTive Architecture for Collaborative Technologies Unit of the Italian Institute of Technology

  3. BifrostUMI: Bridging Robot-Free Demonstrations and Humanoid Whole-Body Manipulation

    May 5, 2026Hongwu Wang, Chenhao Yu, Youhao Hu +3Robotic Data CollectionHumanoid Robot Control

    Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence

  4. SixthSense: Task-Agnostic Proprioception-Only Whole-Body Wrench Estimation for Humanoids

    May 2, 2026Xingzhou Chen, Xiayan Xu, Yan Ning +8Robotic PerceptionHumanoid Robotics

    The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR, China · Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China · Tencent Robotics X, Shenzhen, China

  5. Simulating Infant First-Person Sensorimotor Experience via Motion Retargeting from Babies to Humanoids

    Apr 30, 2026Francisco M. López, Hoshinori Kanazawa, Ondrej Fiala +8Robotics SimulationSynthetic Data Generation for Robotics

    Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany · Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Japan · Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic +1

  6. Egocentric Tactile and Proximity Sensors as Observation Priors for Humanoid Collision Avoidance

    Apr 28, 2026Carson Kohlbrenner, Niraj Pudasaini, William Xie +3RL for RoboticsRobotic Tactile Sensing

    University of Colorado Boulder, 1111 Engineering Drive, Boulder, CO USA.

  7. RecoverFormer: End-to-End Contact-Aware Recovery for Humanoid Robots

    Apr 24, 2026Zihui LiuHumanoid RoboticsHumanoid Robot Control

    Stanford University

  8. SynAgent: Generalizable Cooperative Humanoid Manipulation via Solo-to-Cooperative Agent Synergy

    Apr 20, 2026Wei Yao, Haohan Ma, Hongwen Zhang +6Robotic ControlHOI Generation

    School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China · Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen 518055, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China +2

  9. A Rapid Deployment Pipeline for Autonomous Humanoid Grasping Based on Foundation Models

    Apr 19, 2026Yifei Yan, Yankai Liao, Linqi YeRobotic GraspingHumanoid Robotics

    School of Future Technology, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China · School of Mechanical Engineering, Shanghai Institute of Technology, Shanghai, 201418, China

  10. CLAW: Composable Language-Annotated Whole-body Motion Generation

    Apr 13, 2026Jianuo Cao, Yuxin Chen, Masayoshi TomizukaRobot Motion GenerationSynthetic Data Generation for Robotics

    Nanjing University · University of California, Berkeley

  11. LEGO: Latent-space Exploration for Geometry-aware Optimization of Humanoid Kinematic Design

    Apr 9, 2026Jihwan Yoon, Taemoon Jeong, Jeongeun Park +5Robot Morphology-Control Co-DesignHumanoid Robotics

    Department of Artificial Intelligence, Korea University, Seoul 02841, Republic of Korea · Contoro Robotics, Austin, TX 78758, USA · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA +1

  12. Dynamic Whole-Body Dancing with Humanoid Robots -- A Model-Based Control Approach

    Apr 5, 2026Shibowen Zhang, Jiayang Wu, Guannan Liu +12Robot Motion GenerationHumanoid Robot Control

    Department of Automation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230027, China. · State Key Laboratory of General Artificial Intelligence, Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI), Beijing 100080, China · Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China. +2

  13. A Rapid Instrument Exchange System for Humanoid Robots in Minimally Invasive Surgery

    Apr 3, 2026Bingcong Zhang, Yihang Lyv, Lianbo Ma +6Surgical RoboticsHumanoid Robotics

    Tianjin University, Tianjin, China · Institute of Medical Robotics and Intelligent Systems, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China

  14. Towards Embodied AI with MuscleMimic: Unlocking full-body musculoskeletal motor learning at scale

    Mar 26, 2026Chengkun Li, Cheryl Wang, Bianca Ziliotto +4Musculoskeletal ModelingHuman-to-Robot Motion Imitation

    EPFL, Switzerland · McGill University, Canada · Feil & Oberfeld CRIR-Jewish Rehabilitation Hospital Research Center, Canada +1

  15. SafeGuard ASF: SR Agentic Humanoid Robot System for Autonomous Industrial Safety

    Mar 26, 2026Thanh Nguyen Canh, Thang Tran Viet, Thanh Tuan Tran +1Robot SafetyHumanoid Robotics

    Strike Robotics

  16. Morphology-Consistent Humanoid Interaction through Robot-Centric Video Synthesis

    Mar 20, 2026Weisheng Xu, Jian Li, Yi Gu +12Robot Motion GenerationHumanoid Robotics

    Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen · Shenzhen University +1

  17. HumDex: Humanoid Dexterous Manipulation Made Easy

    Mar 12, 2026Liang Heng, Yihe Tang, Jiajun Xu +3Robotic ManipulationWhole-Body Robotic Manipulation

    USC Physical Superintelligence (PSI) Lab · WorldEngine AI

  18. ZeroWBC: Learning Natural Whole-Body Humanoid Interaction from Human Egocentric Data

    Mar 10, 2026Haoran Yang, Jiacheng Bao, Yucheng Xin +5Human Motion GenerationWhole-Body Control

    University of Science and Technology of China · Shanghai AI Laboratory · Tsinghua University +2

  19. Embedding Classical Balance Control Principles in Reinforcement Learning for Humanoid Recovery

    Mar 9, 2026Nehar Poddar, Stephen McCrory, Luigi Penco +3Humanoid Robot Fall RecoveryHumanoid Robot Control

    Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Pensacola, FL, USA. · University of West Florida, Pensacola, FL, USA.

  20. Morphology-Independent Facial Expression Imitation for Human-Face Robots

    Mar 7, 2026Xu Chen, Rui Gao, Che Sun +4Robot Imitation LearningHumanoid Robotics

  21. Towards Motion Turing Test: Evaluating Human-Likeness in Humanoid Robots

    Mar 6, 2026Mingzhe Li, Mengyin Liu, Zekai Wu +9Humanoid Robotics

    Fujian Key Laboratory of Urban Intelligent Sensing and Computing, Xiamen University · Key Laboratory of Multimedia Trusted Perception and Efficient Computing, Ministry of Education of China, School of Informatics, Xiamen University · National Institute for Data Science in Health and Medicine, Xiamen University +2

  22. Cognition to Control - Multi-Agent Learning for Human-Humanoid Collaborative Transport

    Mar 4, 2026Hao Zhang, Yisen Li, Ruize Geng +4Human-Robot CollaborationMulti-Agent Collaboration

    University of Texas at Arlington. · Carnegie Mellon University

  23. Humanoid Robots as First Assistants in Endoscopic Surgery

    Feb 27, 2026Sue Min Cho, Jan Emily Mangulabnan, Han Zhang +7Healthcare RoboticsSurgical Robotics

    Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA. · NVIDIA Corporation, Bethesda, MD, USA. · Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD, USA.

  24. Humanizing Robot Gaze Shifts: A Framework for Natural Gaze Shifts in Humanoid Robots

    Feb 25, 2026Jingchao Wei, Jingkai Qin, Yuxiao Cao +4Human-Robot InteractionHumanoid Robotics

    School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China

  25. Unified Perceptive Fall Safety for Humanoids

    Feb 18, 2026Osher Azulay, Zhengjie Xu, Andrew Scheffer +1Humanoid Robot Fall RecoveryHumanoid Robot Control

    University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

  26. KungfuAthleteBot: Learning High-Dynamic Motion from Videos with Unified Robust Recovery

    Feb 14, 2026Zhongxiang Lei, Lulu Cao, Xuyang Wang +3Humanoid Robot Fall RecoveryHumanoid Robotics

    Beijing Institute of Technology · QIYUAN Lab

  27. HumanX: Toward Agile and Generalizable Humanoid Interaction Skills from Human Videos

    Feb 2, 2026Yinhuai Wang, Qihan Zhao, Yuen Fui Lau +6Robot Skill LearningHumanoid Robotics

    The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · Shanghai AI Laboratory

  28. Humanoid Everyday: A Comprehensive Robotic Dataset for Open-World Humanoid Manipulation

    Oct 9, 2025Zhenyu Zhao, Hongyi Jing, Xiawei Liu +7Robot Manipulation DatasetsRobotic Data Collection

    University of Southern California · Toyota Research Institute

  29. LapSurgie: Humanoid Robots Performing Surgery via Teleoperated Handheld Laparoscopy

    Oct 3, 2025Zekai Liang, Xiao Liang, Soofiyan Atar +7Robotic ControlRobot Teleoperation

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA. · School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 USA. · UC San Diego Health, La Jolla, CA 92037 USA.

  30. Toward Physical Recursive Self-Improvement: A Call for Body-Control Co-Design for Humanoid Robot

    Oct 3, 2025Guiliang Liu, Bo Yue, Yi Jin Kim +1Robot Morphology-Control Co-DesignHumanoid Robotics

    The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) · DexForce Technology