Robot Locomotion

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Overview

Robot locomotion concerns the mechanisms and control strategies that let robots walk, run, hop, roll, climb, swim, or combine these modes. Researchers use physics-based models, gait planning, model predictive control, and reinforcement learning, often combining perception or tactile sensing with proprioception to adapt to terrain and contact. Work is tested in simulation and on physical robots, with benchmarks for stability, speed, energy use, obstacle traversal, and transfer to unfamiliar settings. A central challenge is making versatile learned controllers reliable in the real world, where uncertain contacts, deformable terrain, sensor errors, and hardware limits can undermine performance.

Latest papers

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233 papers31 papers in the last four weeks, down 16% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. Design, Modeling and Direction Control of a Wire-Driven Robotic Fish Based on a 2-DoF Crank-Slider Mechanism

    Mar 3, 2026Yita Wang, Chen Chen, Yicheng Chen +5Robot LocomotionUnderwater Robotics

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan · Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 153-8505, Japan

  2. Wukong-Omni: Design, Modeling and Control of a Multi-mode Robot for Air, Land, and Underwater Exploration with All-in-One Propulsion Unit

    Mar 3, 2026Yufan Liu, Rixi Yu, Junjie Li +7Robot LocomotionRobotic Control

    School of Automation, Guandong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China · School of Electromechanical Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou, China · Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China

  3. Learning Thermal-Aware Locomotion Policies for an Electrically-Actuated Quadruped Robot

    Mar 2, 2026Letian Qian, Yuhang Wan, Shuhan Wang +1Robot LocomotionQuadruped Locomotion

    State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China

  4. System Design of the Ultra Mobility Vehicle: A Driving, Balancing, and Jumping Bicycle Robot

    Feb 25, 2026Benjamin Bokser, Daniel Gonzalez, Aaron Preston +39Robot LocomotionRobot Morphology-Control Co-Design

  5. Jumping Control for a Quadrupedal Wheeled-Legged Robot via NMPC and DE Optimization

    Feb 25, 2026Xuanqi Zeng, Lingwei Zhang, Linzhu Yue +4Robot LocomotionQuadruped Locomotion

    Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

  6. Athena: An Autonomous Open-Hardware Tracked Rescue Robot Platform

    Feb 23, 2026Stefan Fabian, Aljoscha Schmidt, Jonas Süß +3Search-and-Rescue RoboticsRobot Locomotion

    Technical University of Darmstadt, Computer Science Department, Simulation, Systems Optimization and Robotics Group, Germany.

  7. Design and Control of Modular Magnetic Millirobots for Multimodal Locomotion and Shape Reconfiguration

    Feb 22, 2026Erik Garcia Oyono, Jialin Lin, Dandan ZhangModular RoboticsRobotics

    Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom.

  8. Design, Locomotion, and Control of Amphibious Robots: Recent Advances

    Feb 22, 2026Yi Jin, Chang Liu, Roger D. Quinn +2RoboticsRobot Locomotion

    Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA · John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Allston, MA, 02134, USA · Department of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA +2

  9. Soft Surfaced Vision-Based Tactile Sensing for Bipedal Robot Applications

    Feb 20, 2026Jaeeun Kim, Junhee Lim, Yu SheRobotic Tactile SensingVision-Based Tactile Sensing

    Department of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA · Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA

  10. Cross-Embodiment Offline Reinforcement Learning for Heterogeneous Robot Datasets

    Feb 20, 2026Haruki Abe, Takayuki Osa, Yusuke Mukuta +1RL for RoboticsCross-Embodiment Robot Learning

    The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan · RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project, Tokyo, Japan

  11. Whole-Brain Connectomic Graph Model Enables Whole-Body Locomotion Control in Fruit Fly

    Feb 20, 2026Zehao Jin, Yaoye Zhu, Chen Zhang +1Whole-Body ControlRobot Locomotion

    Tsinghua University

  12. Grip as Needed, Glide on Demand: Ultrasonic Lubrication for Robotic Locomotion

    Feb 17, 2026Mostafa A. Atalla, Daan van Bemmel, Jack Cummings +3Robot Locomotion

    Department of BioMechanical Engineering, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands. · Department of Cognitive Robotics, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands.

  13. OSCAR: An Ovipositor-Inspired Self-Propelling Capsule Robot for Colonoscopy

    Feb 17, 2026Mostafa A. Atalla, Anand S. Sekar, Remi van Starkenburg +4Robotic EndoscopyRobot Locomotion

    M. A. Atalla, A. S. Sekar, R. van Starkenburg, D. J. Jager, A. Sakes, and P. Breedveld are with the Department of BioMechanical Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands. · M. A. Atalla and M. Wiertlewski are with the Department of Cognitive Robotics, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands.

  14. TTT-Parkour: Rapid Test-Time Training for Perceptive Robot Parkour

    Feb 2, 2026Shaoting Zhu, Baijun Ye, Jiaxuan Wang +5Robot LocomotionHumanoid Robot Locomotion

    Tsinghua University · Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute · Princeton University

  15. TriphiBot: A Triphibious Robot Combining FOC-based Propulsion with Eccentric Design

    Feb 1, 2026Xiangyu Li, Tiancheng Lai, Mingwei Lai +6Aerial RoboticsNonlinear MPC

    State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China · Huzhou Institute of Zhejiang University, Huzhou 313000, China · Hainan Red Tower Cigarette Co., Ltd., Hainan 571100, China

  16. Hiking in the Wild: A Scalable Perceptive Parkour Framework for Humanoids

    Jan 12, 2026Shaoting Zhu, Ziwen Zhuang, Mengjie Zhao +2Humanoid Robot LocomotionRobot Locomotion

    IIIS, Tsinghua University · Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute · Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University

  17. SKATER: Synthesized Kinematics for Advanced Traversing Efficiency on a Humanoid Robot via Roller Skate Swizzles

    Jan 8, 2026Junchi Gu, Feiyang Yuan, Weize Shi +6Robot LocomotionHumanoid Robot Locomotion

    Institute of Humanoid Robots, Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.

  18. Debate2Create: Robot Co-design via Multi-Agent LLM Debate

    Oct 29, 2025Kevin Qiu, Marek CyganRobot Morphology-Control Co-DesignMulti-Agent Debate

    University of Warsaw · 2IDEAS NCBR · 3Nomagic

  19. Pretraining in Actor-Critic Reinforcement Learning for Locomotion

    Oct 14, 2025Jiale Fan, Andrei Cramariuc, Tifanny Portela +1RL for RoboticsReinforcement Learning

    Section of Microengineering, EPFL, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland · Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland · ETH AI Center, ETH Zurich, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland

  20. Uncertainty-Aware Ankle Exoskeleton Control

    Aug 28, 2025Fatima Mumtaza Tourk, Bishoy Galoaa, Sanat Shajan +3Uncertainty QuantificationAnkle Exoskeleton Control

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115 USA

  21. Physics-Guided Residual Reinforcement Learning for Humanoid Narrow-Path Traversal

    Aug 28, 2025Tianchen Huang, Sisheng Chen, Wei Zhou +8Humanoid Robot LocomotionRobot Skill Learning

    Institute of Humanoid Robots, Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China

  22. Tunable Leg Stiffness in a Monopedal Hopper for Energy-Efficient Vertical Hopping Across Varying Ground Profiles

    Aug 4, 2025Rongqian Chen, Jun Kwon, Kefan Wu +1Legged RoboticsEnergy-Efficient Robot Locomotion

    George Washington University · General Robotics, Automation, Sensing & Perception Lab at the University of Pennsylvania · University of Connecticut

  23. Sensitive dependence of the motion of a legged robot on granular media

    May 29, 2009Chen Li, Paul B. Umbanhowar, Haldun Komsuoglu +2Granular Terrain LocomotionRobot Locomotion

    School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332 · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208 · Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104