Robot Motion Planning

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Overview

Robot motion planning determines how a robot can move from a start state to a goal while respecting obstacles, its own geometry and dynamics, and task requirements. Classical approaches include graph search, sampling-based planners such as PRM and RRT, potential fields, and trajectory optimization or model predictive control; newer methods use learned policies and generative models to propose or refine motions. Planning is also combined with perception, feedback control, temporal-logic specifications, and task-level reasoning for settings such as manipulation, navigation, and multi-robot coordination. A central challenge is balancing speed and generalization in uncertain, dynamic environments with reliable execution and safety guarantees, especially when learned plans must transfer from simulation to physical robots.

Latest papers

CardsList

271 papers34 papers in the last four weeks, down 13% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. 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

  2. Enhancing Deep Reinforcement Learning for Robotic Motion Planning via Task Decomposition

    Oct 26, 2026Yuanzhi He, Victor Romero-Cano, Jiayu Xu +2Reinforcement LearningRobotic RL

    School of Computational and Mathematical Sciences, Cardiff University, United Kingdom

  3. Learning Interaction-Aware Path Corrections from Unlabeled Trajectories: A LiDAR-Based Sim-to-Real GNN Framework for Construction Robots

    Oct 25, 2026Yilong Chen, Yong K. ChoSocial Robot NavigationRobot Learning

    School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA30332, United States

  4. Integrating Flow Matching and Model Predictive Control for Safe Robot Navigation

    Oct 21, 2026Philipp Holzmann, Maik Pfefferkorn, Joao Carvalho +5Robot Motion PlanningSafe Motion Planning

    Control and Cyber-Physical Systems Laboratory, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany · Intelligent Autonomous Systems Laboratory, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany · German Research Center for AI (DFKI), Research Department SAIROL +3

  5. SPAR: Search-trained Push Action Ranker for Efficient Navigation Among Movable Obstacles

    Oct 20, 2026Dhruv Metha Ramesh, Tri-An Nguyen, Junshan Huang +3Robotic Object PushingRobot Motion Planning

  6. High-Precision RCM Motion for Ophthalmic Robotics via Hierarchical QP Control and Authority-Guided Recovery Planning

    Oct 20, 2026Huanyu Tian, Adriana Namour, Lingyun Zeng +4Robotic ControlSurgical Robotics

    H. Tian, A. Namour, L. Zeng, Z. Wu, S. Ourselin and C. Bergeles are with the School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences, King’s College London, UK. · L. da Cruz is with Moorfields Eye Hospital, NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.

  7. What Makes a Good Symbol for Hybrid Discrete-Continuous Planning?

    Oct 16, 2026Yiyuan Pan, Changliu Liu, Jiayuan MaoSymbolic PlanningSymbolic Reasoning

    Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University · University of Pennsylvania

  8. Shape-Aware Neural Time Fields for Rigid-Body Motion and Manipulation Planning

    Oct 16, 2026Yanming Zhou, Yuchen Liu, Ahmed H. QureshiMotion PlanningRobot Motion Planning

    Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA

  9. Sim-to-Real Reinforcement Learning for Path-Safe Target Reaching in Robotic Harvesting of Hydroponic Lettuce

    Oct 15, 2026Al Bashir, Partho Ghose, Yibin Wang +4Robotic HarvestingRL for Robotics

    Department of Biological & Agricultural Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA · Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Texas A&M University System, Dallas, TX, 75252, USA · Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, 77843, USA +1

  10. Time-Optimal Ergodic Retrieval

    Oct 15, 2026Christian Sulana, Christian Hughes, Ian AbrahamErgodic ControlRobotic Object Search

    Christian Sulana is with Saddleback College, Mission Viejo, California, USA · Christian Hughes is with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA · Ian Abraham is with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

  11. CLIS-MPPI: Closed-Loop Model Predictive Path Integral Control With Initial-State Sampling Under Execution Delay

    Oct 15, 2026Zidong Liu, Xu ChenMPPI ControlRobot Motion Planning

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.

  12. Vision-Guided Closed-Loop Autonomous Navigation of Light-Driven Janus Microbots

    Oct 15, 2026Kanhu Charan Andia, Harsh Prashant Katole, Parth Nitinkumar Bhosale +2Robot NavigationVision-Based Robot Control

    Department of Physics, IIT Bhilai, Durg, Chhattisgarh, 491002, India · Department of Mechatronics, IIT Bhilai, Durg, Chhattisgarh, 491002, India · Department of Computer science and Engineering, IIT Bhilai, Durg, Chhattisgarh, 491002, India

  13. Hyperspherical Contrastive Representations Unlock Planning and Exploration

    Oct 14, 2026Jonghae Park, Sungil Son, Jonghun Shin +3Robotic RLRobot Motion Planning

    Seoul National University · Princeton University

  14. Learning Keypoint Constraints from Visual Demonstrations for Safe Motion Planning

    Oct 13, 2026Zheng Qiu, Zhouyu Zhang, Ninghan Zhong +1Robot Motion PlanningSafe Motion Planning

  15. Belief Space Planning for Risk Signal Temporal Logic via Mixed-Integer Convex Programming

    Oct 12, 2026Shaohang Han, Joris Verhagen, Kaier Liang +1Belief-Space PlanningSTL Planning

    Division of Robotics, Perception and Learning, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden · Digital Futures

  16. In View or Out of View? A Vision-Aware Filter that Infers and Reacts to the Human's Field of View

    Oct 10, 2026Mengxue Fu, Ya-Chuan Hsu, Yinlong Dai +2Human-Robot InteractionHuman-Robot Collaboration

    LiraLab, Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089 · Collaborative Robotics Lab (Collab), Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061

  17. PATACON: GPU-Parallel Tangent-Bundle RRT-Connect for Constrained Motion Planning

    Oct 9, 2026Gahyun Oh, Junho An, Suhyun Jeon +1Constrained Motion PlanningMotion Planning

    Department of Robotics, Kwangwoon University, Seoul, Republic of Korea. · Department of Intelligence and Information, Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea.

  18. Image-Based Path-Planning for Navigation of Soft-Growing Robots in the Spinal Sub-Arachnoid Space

    Oct 8, 2026George Dimas, Panagiotis G. Kalozoumis, Panagiotis Vartholomeos +1Robot Motion PlanningSafe Robot Navigation

    Dept. of Computer Science and Biomedical Informatics, School of Science, University of Thessaly, Lamia, Greece

  19. Graph-Based Heuristics for Minimum Constraint Removal in Cluttered Robot Motion Planning

    Oct 8, 2026Antony Thomas, Fulvio Mastrogiovanni, Marco BagliettoMotion PlanningRobot Motion Planning

    Robotics Research Center, IIIT Hyderabad, 500032, Hyderabad, India. · Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics, and Systems Engineering, University of Genoa, 16145, Genoa, Italy.

  20. PathTime-VLA: Path-Time Decoupling for Factorized Post-Training of Vision-Language-Action Policies

    Oct 8, 2026Qing Huang, Yifei Yang, Ziqing Zou +5Robot Policy LearningVision-Language-Action Models

    Zhejiang University

  21. 2DGS-Planner: Rasterization-based Path Planning in 2D Gaussian Splatting Map

    Oct 8, 2026Jiwon Park, Dong-Uk Seo, Hyun MyungRobot Motion PlanningMotion Planning

  22. Making Task Abstractions Executable: Control-Aware Layout Repair for a Fixed Controller

    Oct 7, 2026Chiyoung Kim, Seungyeon Back, Sumin Shim +2Robot Task PlanningConstrained Motion Planning

    Chung-Ang University · Hanyang University · Carnegie Mellon University +1

  23. Masked Generative Motion Planning with Geometry-Guided Token Search

    Oct 7, 2026Lipeng Zhuang, Yingdong Ru, Shiyu Fan +3Motion PlanningRobot Motion Planning

    University of Glasgow, Glasgow, United Kingdom

  24. MeshSIPP: Efficient Lattice Planning in Dynamic Environment

    Oct 7, 2026Marat Agranovskiy, Konstantin YakovlevSafe Interval Path PlanningMotion Planning

  25. Fast Planning for Multi-object Multi-target Throwing

    Oct 6, 2026Zhengming Zhu, Yang Liu, Xiao Gao +1Robotic ManipulationRobot Motion Planning

    Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory (LASA), EPFL, Switzerland

  26. geodex: A Library for Motion Planning on Riemannian Manifolds

    Oct 6, 2026Phone Thiha Kyaw, Ben Wei, Sepehr Samavi +2Motion PlanningRobot Motion Planning

    Space & Terrestrial Autonomous Robotic Systems (STARS) Laboratory at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS), Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M3H 5T6

  27. Post-Grasp Kinematic Repair for Robotic Insertion via Object-in-Gripper Reorientation

    Oct 6, 2026Haegu Lee, Christoffer SlothIn-Hand ManipulationRobotic Insertion

    The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark

  28. Trajectory Planning without Trajectory Data: A Manifold-Guided Approach

    Oct 5, 2026Silong Yong, Anji Liu, Cunxi Dai +5Motion PlanningRobot Motion Planning

    Carnegie Mellon University · National University of Singapore · DEVCOM Army Research Laboratory +1

  29. Nudge Before You Push: Physics-Aware Navigation via Tactile Probing

    Oct 4, 2026Xianyao Li, Fang Xu, Ruitong Tian +4Robot NavigationSafe Robot Navigation

    Department of Civil and Coastal Engineering, University of Florida · Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University

  30. RUL-Aware RRT*: Degradation-Balanced Motion Planning for Robotic Manipulators

    Oct 1, 2026Haibo Li, Zhiguo Zeng, Xu LiRobot Motion PlanningRobotics

    Laboratoire Génie Industriel, CentraleSupélec, Université Paris-Saclay, France · Chair of Risk and Resilience of Complex Systems, CentraleSupélec, Université Paris-Saclay, France · Key Laboratory of Urban Underground Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, China