Robot Collision Avoidance

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Overview

Robot collision avoidance studies how robots can move and act without hitting obstacles, people, or other robots, including in cluttered, changing environments. Methods range from geometric planning and model predictive control to control barrier functions that filter unsafe commands, alongside learned policies using depth, vision, tactile sensing, or motion forecasts. Work spans drone flight, manipulation, legged robots, human-robot collaboration, and multi-robot coordination, with evaluation increasingly combining simulation, benchmarks, and physical tests. A central tension is maintaining formal or empirical safety under uncertain sensing and dynamics without making behavior too conservative, slow, or likely to stall.

Latest papers

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163 papers27 papers in the last four weeks, level with the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. Can Explicit Physical Feasibility Benefit VLA Learning? An Empirical Study

    Apr 20, 2026Yubai Wei, Chen Wu, Hashem HaghbayanVision-Language-Action ModelsRobot Imitation Learning

    Department of Computing, University of Turku, Finland

  2. Trajectory Planning for a Multi-UAV Rigid-Payload Cascaded Transportation System Based on Enhanced Tube-RRT*

    Apr 16, 2026Jianqiao Yu, Jia Li, Tianhua GaoMulti-Robot Motion PlanningTrajectory Optimization

    Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing , China · University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

  3. Capability-Aware Heterogeneous Control Barrier Functions for Decentralized Multi-Robot Safe Navigation

    Apr 14, 2026Joonkyung Kim, Yanze Zhang, Wenhao Luo +1Safe Robot NavigationControl Barrier Functions

    Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University · Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois Chicago

  4. Safe Human-to-Humanoid Motion Imitation Using Control Barrier Functions

    Apr 13, 2026Wenqi Cai, John Abanes, Nikolaos Evangeliou +1Human-to-Robot Motion ImitationRobot Imitation Learning

    The authors are with the Electrical Engineering Program, New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD), 129188, UAE. · The author is with the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department, New York University, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA.

  5. Simple but Stable, Fast and Safe: Achieve End-to-end Control by High-Fidelity Differentiable Simulation

    Apr 12, 2026Fanxing Li, Shengyang Wang, Yuxiang Huang +5Quadrotor ControlVision-Based Robot Control

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Kunshan Duke University

  6. COSMIK-MPPI: Scaling Constrained Model Predictive Control to Collision Avoidance in Close-Proximity Dynamic Human Environments

    Apr 11, 2026Ege Gursoy, Maxime Sabbah, Arthur Haffemayer +5Robot Collision AvoidanceModel Predictive Control

    LAAS-CNRS, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, Toulouse, France · CIIRC, Czech Technical University, Prague · LIRMM, Université de Montpellier, CNRS, Montpellier, France +3

  7. Instantaneous Planning, Control and Safety for Navigation in Unknown Underwater Spaces

    Apr 7, 2026Veejay Karthik, Udit Ekansh, Tejal Bedmutha +3Autonomous Underwater NavigationSafe Motion Planning

    Centre for Systems and Control, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai · Institute for Control, Optimization, and Networks, Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA

  8. SafeDMPs: Integrating Formal Safety with DMPs for Adaptive HRI

    Mar 31, 2026Soumyodipta Nath, Pranav Tiwari, Ravi PrakashRobot Motion GenerationSafe Motion Planning

    All authors are with the Cyber Physical Systems, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, 560012, India.

  9. Saranga: MilliWatt Ultrasound for Navigation in Visually Degraded Environments on Palm-Sized Aerial Robots

    Mar 25, 2026Manoj Velmurugan, Phillip Brush, Colin Balfour +2Robot NavigationRobotic Ultrasound

    Perception and Autonomous Robotics (PeAR) Group, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609, USA. · TDK InvenSense, Berkeley, CA 94710, USA.

  10. C-STEP: Continuous Space-Time Empowerment for Physics-informed Safe Reinforcement Learning of Mobile Agents

    Mar 25, 2026Guihlerme Daubt, Adrian RedderSafe RLSafe Robot Navigation

    Faculty of Technology, Bielefeld University, Germany · Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Paderborn University, Germany

  11. Not an Obstacle for Dog, but a Hazard for Human: A Co-Ego Navigation System for Guide Dog Robots

    Mar 20, 2026Ruiping Liu, Jingqi Zhang, Junwei Zheng +8Safe Robot NavigationAssistive Robotics

    The authors are with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany. · The author is with ETH Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland. · The author is with INSAIT, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, 1784 Sofia, Bulgaria. +1

  12. A Closed-Form CLF-CBF Controller for Whole-Body Continuum Soft Robot Collision Avoidance

    Mar 19, 2026Kiwan Wong, Maximillian Stölzle, Wei Xiao +1Control Lyapunov FunctionsContinuum Robot Control

    Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA · Robotics Engineering Department, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA 01609, USA

  13. CSSDF-Net: Safe Motion Planning Based on Neural Implicit Representations of Configuration Space Distance Field

    Mar 19, 2026Haohua Chen, Yixuan Zhou, Yifan Zhou +1Safe Motion PlanningRobot Collision Avoidance

    IRMV Lab, Department of Automation, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China.

  14. ToMPC: Task-oriented Model Predictive Control via ADMM for Safe Robotic Manipulation

    Mar 14, 2026Xinyu Jia, Wenxin Wang, Jun Yang +2Safe Robot ManipulationRobotic Manipulation

    Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117583 · Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen 518057, China · School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798

  15. A Feasibility-Enhanced Control Barrier Function Method for Multi-UAV Collision Avoidance

    Mar 13, 2026Qishen Zhong, Junlong Wu, Jian Yang +4Collision AvoidanceRobot Collision Avoidance

    School of Automation Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510641, Guangdong, China

  16. Safe Probabilistic Planning for Human-Robot Interaction using Conformal Risk Control

    Mar 11, 2026Jake Gonzales, Kazuki Mizuta, Karen Leung +1Human-Robot InteractionSafe Robot Navigation

    University of Washington, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering · University of Washington, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

  17. PanoDP: Learning Collision-Free Navigation with Panoramic Depth and Differentiable Physics

    Mar 8, 2026Hao Zhong, Pei Chi, Jiang Zhao +4Panoramic Depth EstimationSafe Robot Navigation

    School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. · Beihang University, Beijing, China. · The University of Queensland, Australia.

  18. Fly360: Omnidirectional Obstacle Avoidance within Drone View

    Mar 6, 2026Xiangkai Zhang, Dizhe Zhang, WenZhuo Cao +5UAV NavigationRobot Collision Avoidance

    Institute of Automation Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · Insta360 Research, Shenzhen, China · Wuhan University,Wuhan, China.

  19. Iterative Convex Optimization with Control Barrier Functions for Obstacle Avoidance among Polytopes

    Mar 6, 2026Shuo Liu, Zhe Huang, Calin A. BeltaRobot Collision AvoidanceSafe Motion Planning

    Boston University, Brookline, MA, USA · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and with the Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

  20. Don't Freeze, Don't Crash: Extending the Safe Operating Range of Neural Navigation in Dense Crowds

    Mar 6, 2026Jiefu Zhang, Yang Xu, Vaneet AggarwalSafe Robot NavigationRobot Navigation

    Purdue University, USA

  21. cuRoboV2: Dynamics-Aware Motion Generation with Depth-Fused Distance Fields for High-DoF Robots

    Mar 5, 2026Balakumar Sundaralingam, Adithyavairavan Murali, Stan BirchfieldRobot Motion GenerationKinodynamic Motion Planning

  22. U-OBCA: Uncertainty-Aware Optimization-Based Collision Avoidance via Wasserstein Distributionally Robust Chance Constraints

    Mar 5, 2026Zehao Wang, Yuxuan Tang, Han Zhang +2Chance-Constrained Motion PlanningCollision Avoidance

    School of Automation and Intelligent Sensing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Institute of Medical Robotics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China. · Key Laboratory of System Control and Information Processing, Ministry of Education of China, and Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Intelligent Control and Management, Shanghai 200240, China.

  23. GIANT - Global Path Integration and Attentive Graph Networks for Multi-Agent Trajectory Planning

    Mar 4, 2026Jonas le Fevre Sejersen, Toyotaro Suzumura, Erdal KayacanMulti-Robot Motion PlanningRobot Collision Avoidance

    Artificial Intelligence in Robotics Laboratory (AiR Lab), Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Aarhus University, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark · Foundation Models for Artificial Intelligence group, Department of Information and Communication Engineering, Tokyo University, Tokyo, Japan · Automatic Control Group, Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany

  24. RVN-Bench: A Benchmark for Reactive Visual Navigation

    Mar 4, 2026Jaewon Lee, Jaeseok Heo, Gunmin Lee +3Robot Navigation BenchmarksRobot Navigation

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Seoul National University (SNU) and Automation and Systems Research Institute (ASRI) and Sequor Robotics Inc., Seoul, Korea (Republic of). · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Seoul National University (SNU) and Automation and Systems Research Institute (ASRI), Seoul, Korea (Republic of). · Interdisciplinary Program in Artificial Intelligence, Seoul National University (SNU) and Automation and Systems Research Institute (ASRI) and Sequor Robotics Inc., Seoul, Korea (Republic of). +1

  25. Watch Your Step: Learning Semantically-Guided Locomotion in Cluttered Environment

    Mar 3, 2026Denan Liang, Yuan Zhu, Ruimeng Liu +3Legged RoboticsRL for Legged Locomotion

  26. Give me scissors: Collision-Free Dual-Arm Surgical Assistive Robot for Instrument Delivery

    Mar 3, 2026Xuejin Luo, Shiquan Sun, Runshi Zhang +2Healthcare RoboticsSurgical Robotics

    School of Mechanical Engineering and Automation, Beihang University, Beijing, China

  27. Goal-Oriented Semantic Communication for ISAC-Enabled Robotic Obstacle Avoidance

    Mar 2, 2026Wenjie Liu, Yansha Deng, Henk WymeerschTask-Oriented Semantic CommunicationIntegrated Sensing and Communication

    Department of Engineering, King’s College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, U.K. · Department of Electrical Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.

  28. A Safety-Aware Shared Autonomy Framework with BarrierIK Using Control Barrier Functions

    Mar 2, 2026Berk Guler, Kay Pompetzki, Yuanzheng Sun +2Shared AutonomyRobot Collision Avoidance

    Technical University of Darmstadt · Honda Research Institute Europe GmbH · German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) +2

  29. RoboGPU: Accelerating GPU Collision Detection for Robotics

    Mar 2, 2026Lufei Liu, Liwei Xue, Yuan Hsi Chou +4GPU AccelerationRobotics

    University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada

  30. Layered Safety: Enhancing Autonomous Collision Avoidance via Multistage CBF Safety Filters

    Feb 27, 2026Erina Yamaguchi, Ryan M. Bena, Gilbert Bahati +1Safety-Critical ControlControl Barrier Functions

    Department of Mechanical and Civil Engineering and the Department of Aerospace, Caltech, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA