Legged Robotics

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Overview

Legged robotics investigates how quadrupeds, humanoids, and other walking or hopping machines move safely and efficiently while interacting with uneven, cluttered, or changing terrain. Common approaches include model-predictive and whole-body control, reinforcement learning, foothold and terrain planning, and sensor fusion for estimating motion and foot contact. Researchers test these methods in simulation and on physical robots, with tasks ranging from rough-terrain traversal and jumping to manipulation and navigation. A central challenge is making robots robust to uncertain contact, sensor failures, and unfamiliar environments while balancing agility, energy use, safety, and reliable sim-to-real transfer.

Latest papers

CardsList

126 papers22 papers in the last four weeks, up 22% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. A Bi-level Co-design Framework for Lunar Monoped with 2D Jump and Landing Control

    Oct 27, 2026Sanjay Ramkumar, Suraj KumarRoboticsLegged Robotics

    Dept. of Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology. · Controls and Digital Area, U R Rao Satellite Center.

  2. Differentiable Contact Dynamics for Legged Locomotion: Policy Learning and Contact-Implicit Trajectory Optimization

    Oct 26, 2026Gijeong Kim, Seungbin Oh, Dongyun Kang +1Differentiable PhysicsTrajectory Optimization

    The authors are with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon 34141, South Korea.

  3. 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

  4. Make it Walk: Computational Design of LEGO Walkers

    Oct 21, 2026Siqi Li, Fancheng Gao, Chi-Wing Fu +1Robot LocomotionLegged Robotics

    Singapore University of Technology and Design · The Chinese University of Hong Kong

  5. A2I-Calib++: A Kinematics-Driven Anti-noise Active Calibration Framework for Whole-Body Multi-IMU Systems on Legged Robots

    Oct 21, 2026Fangyu Jiang, Chaoran Xiong, Kehui Ma +3Legged RoboticsInertial Odometry

    Shanghai Key Laboratory of Navigation and Location Based Services, School of Automation and Intelligent Sensing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

  6. Bio-inspired Thrust-Assisted Trotting on a legged-Aerial Robot via Real-Time QP-MPC

    Oct 19, 2026Shreyansh Pitroda, Eric Sihite, Alireza Ramezani +1Robot LocomotionLegged Robotics

    The authors are with SiliconeSynapse Labs, the Department of Electrical Engineering, Northeastern University, USA. · The authors are with the Department of Aerospace Engineering, California Institute of Technology, USA.

  7. Anticipatory Gait Switching for Quadrupeds via Look-Ahead MDP Planning

    Oct 17, 2026Kelvin Aladum, Justin Peel, Nisar AhmedLegged RoboticsQuadruped Locomotion

  8. Reinforcement Learning Based Multi-Terrain Adaptive Whole-Body Control for a Quadruped Manipulator

    Oct 16, 2026Yanzhou Jin, Fei Suo, Chang Liu +5Legged RoboticsWhole-Body Control

    Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Japan. · Department of Micro-Nano Mechanical Science and Engineering, Nagoya University, Nagoya, 464-8603, Japan. · Department of Mathematics and Informatics, Ecole Centrale de Lyon, France.

  9. FCTS: Failure-Guided Curriculum Tree Search Over Generated Terrain for Legged Parkour

    Oct 15, 2026Narayanan Palghat Parameswaran, Dong-Ki Kim, Jay Patrikar +4Legged RoboticsCurriculum Learning

    Carnegie Mellon University · FieldAI

  10. LAG-IO: Multi-IMU State Estimation for Legged Robots Using Factor Graphs

    Oct 13, 2026Yicheng Zhou, Longwen Chen, Qinghua Yu +3Robot State EstimationInertial Odometry

  11. 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.

  12. PointWalker: Mapless Quadruped Locomotion Directly From Raw LiDAR Point Clouds

    Oct 11, 2026Sicen Li, Zhen Chu, Chao Li +3Quadruped LocomotionLegged Robotics

    College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China · Yunshenchu Technology Co., Ltd., Hangzhou, China · Hangzhou Public Library, Hangzhou, China +1

  13. 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

  14. Toward Lunar Legged Robots: Field Deployment Lessons at LUNA

    Oct 8, 2026Adrian Fuhrer, Joseph Church, Oliver Fischer +6RoboticsLegged Robotics

    ETH Zurich, Robotics Systems Lab; Leonhardstrasse 21, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland

  15. RAGNAROK: Radar-Aided Gravity-Normalized Alignment for Robust Open Keyframe-based Radar-Visual-Kinematic-Inertial SLAM

    Oct 8, 2026Hanjun Kim, Chiyun Noh, Sangwoo Jung +5Simultaneous Localization and MappingRobot State Estimation

    Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, SNU, Seoul, S. Korea · Mobile Robotics Lab, School of Computation, Information and Technology (CIT) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), 80333 Munich, Germany, and with the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) · Mobile Robotics Lab, ETH Zurich, 80892 Zurich, Switzerland

  16. Higher-Order Morphology Priors for Quadruped Reinforcement Learning Under Actuator Degradation

    Oct 7, 2026Derek You, Zafir Shamsi, Keqin Wang +1Higher-Order GNNsRL for Legged Locomotion

    Edison Academy Magnet School. · South Brunswick High School. Work done during the Princeton Laboratory Learning Program. · Princeton University.

  17. LLA-MPPI: Rapidly Adaptive Whole-body Control of Legged Robots with GPU-Accelerated Parallel Simulations

    Oct 7, 2026Sebin Jung, Maitham F. AL-Sunni, Juan Alvarez-Padilla +3Legged RoboticsRobot Locomotion

    Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA · Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA

  18. Energy-Efficient Gait Adaptation via Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Quadrupedal Locomotion Across Diverse Terrains

    Oct 7, 2026Ammar Issa, Anubhav Singh, Anton Tsaritsin +1Legged RoboticsEnergy-Efficient Robot Locomotion

    Faculty of Control Systems and Robotics, ITMO University, and the Biomechatronics and Energy-Efficient Robotics Lab (BE2R), St. Petersburg, Russia

  19. ClimbLab: MATLAB Simulation Platform for Legged Climbing Robotics

    Oct 7, 2026Kentaro Uno, Warley F. R. Ribeiro, Yusuke Koizumi +4Robotics SimulationLegged Robotics

    Space Robotics Lab (SRL), Department of Aerospace Engineering, Tohoku University, Aoba 6-6-01, Aramaki-Aza, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8579, Japan · VisionSpace Technologies GmbH, Robert-Bosch Straße 7, 64293 Darmstadt, Germany

  20. Magnet-Aware Control of Legged Robots

    Oct 6, 2026J. Playan Garai, S. B. Djuve, C. McGreavy +1Robotic ControlLegged Robotics

    Technical University of Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany · Conseil Europ´een pour la Recherche Nucl´eaire (CERN), BE/CEM/MRO, Geneva, Switzerland

  21. Hierarchical Reinforcement Learning for Collision-Free Locomotion of an Underactuated Biped

    Oct 5, 2026Jagannath Prasad Sahoo, Saurabh Kumar, Surya Prakash S. K. +3Legged RoboticsHierarchical RL

    CAIR, Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, Mandi, India · SMME, Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, Mandi, India

  22. Terrain-Dependent Intra-Cycle Leg Timing for Effective Locomotion on Granular Slopes

    Oct 2, 2026Long Zhao, Xingjue Liao, Feifei QianGranular Terrain LocomotionRobot Locomotion

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.

  23. Around the World: Unified Learned Locomotion on a 270 g Continuous-Rotation Quadruped

    Oct 2, 2026Arturo Flores Alvarez, Nathan Lintu, Dennis HongLegged RoboticsQuadruped Locomotion

    Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa), University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

  24. 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

  25. 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

  26. A Long-Legged, Direct-Drive Monopedal Robot Achieves Exceptional Jump Height

    Sep 24, 2026Gihyeok Na, Justin K. YimLegged RoboticsRobot Locomotion

    Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL 61801 USA

  27. Contact as a Decision Variable: Capability-Tradeoff Contact Selection for Legged Loco-Manipulation

    Sep 24, 2026Al Jaber Mahmud, Shuai Li, Xuan WangLegged RoboticsContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    George Mason University · University of Florida

  28. Echo in the Steps: Learning Perceptive Humanoid Parkour with Gated Memory

    Sep 24, 2026Ming-Ju Lee, Zizhuo Wang, Shaoting Zhu +3Legged RoboticsHumanoid Robot Locomotion

    Tsinghua University

  29. Water Surface Swimming in a Centipede and its Robophysical Model

    Sep 22, 2026Zhaochen J. Xu, Delfin Aydin, Abdullah Mustafa +4Robot LocomotionRobotics

    Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA

  30. Task-Oriented Co-Design and Optimization of Geared Actuators for Robotic Applications

    Sep 19, 2026Xuanyu Huang, Jianqiang Dong, Hang ZhaoLegged Robotics

    The authors are with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, China