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

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

  1. DAG-STL: A Hierarchical Framework for Zero-Shot Trajectory Planning under Signal Temporal Logic Specifications

    Apr 20, 2026Ruijia Liu, Ancheng Hou, Xiao Yu +1Constrained Motion PlanningTrajectory Generation

    School of Automation and Intelligent Sensing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China. · Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Xiamen University, Xiamen, China.

  2. NaviFormer: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Transformer-like Model to Holistically Solve the Navigation Problem

    Apr 18, 2026Daniel Fuertes, Andrea Cavallaro, Carlos R. del-Blanco +2Reinforcement LearningRobot Navigation

    Grupo de Tratamiento de Im´agenes, Information Processing and Telecommunications Center, ETSI Telecomunicaci´on, Universidad Polit´ecnica de Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain · Idiap Research Institute, Martigny, Switzerland

  3. Contact-Aware Planning and Control of Continuum Robots in Highly Constrained Environments

    Apr 17, 2026Aedan Mangan, Kehan Long, Ki Myung Brian Lee +3Constrained Motion PlanningContact-Aware Motion Planning

    Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA 92093, USA · SceniX Inc, New York, NY 10011, USA · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, San Diego, CA 92093, USA +1

  4. Benchmarking Classical Coverage Path Planning Heuristics on Irregular Hexagonal Grids for Maritime Coverage Scenarios

    Apr 16, 2026Carlos S. Sepúlveda, Gonzalo A. RuzRoboticsGraph-Based Planning

    Facultad de Ingeniería y Ciencias, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile · Millennium Nucleus for Social Data Science (SODAS) · Millennium Nucleus in Data Science for Plant Resilience (PhytoLearning)

  5. NEAT-NC: NEAT guided Navigation Cells for Robot Path Planning

    Apr 16, 2026Hibatallah Meliani, Khadija Slimani, Samira KhouljiEvolutionary OptimizationRobot Navigation

    ISI Laboratory, National School of Applied Sciences (ENSA), Abdelmalek Essaadi University Tetouan, Morocco · EsieaLab LDR, Higher School of Computer Science, Electronics and Automation (ESIEA) Paris, France

  6. Robotic Nanoparticle Synthesis via Solution-based Processes

    Apr 14, 2026Dasharadhan Mahalingam, Michael Gallagher, Nilanjan Chakraborty +1RoboticsLong-Horizon Robotic Manipulation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA · Department of Chemistry, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA

  7. 3D-Anchored Lookahead Planning for Persistent Robotic Scene Memory via World-Model-Based MCTS

    Apr 13, 2026Bronislav Sidik, Dror MizrahiRobotic Spatial MemoryRobotics

    Huawei Technologies, Israel R&D Center

  8. One Interface, Many Robots: Unified Real-Time Low-Level Motion Planning for Collaborative Arms

    Apr 9, 2026Yue Feng, Weicheng Huang, I-Ming ChenRoboticsRobot Motion Planning

    Robotics Research Center (RRC), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798. · WinGs Robotics LLC, NY, 10314 USA.

  9. Flow Motion Policy: Manipulator Motion Planning with Flow Matching Models

    Apr 8, 2026Davood Soleymanzadeh, Xiao Liang, Minghui ZhengRobot Motion PlanningRobot Motion Generation

    J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA · Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843 USA

  10. Goal-Conditioned Neural ODEs with Guaranteed Safety and Stability for Learning-Based All-Pairs Motion Planning

    Apr 3, 2026Dechuan Liu, Ruigang Wang, Ian R. ManchesterConstrained Motion PlanningSafe Motion Planning

    Australian Centre for Robotics (ACFR), and the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

  11. Bridging Discrete Planning and Continuous Execution for Redundant Robot

    Apr 2, 2026Teng Yan, Yue Yu, Yihan Liu +1Robot Motion PlanningMotion Planning

    Thrust of Artificial Intelligence, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou 511400, China

  12. CLaD: Planning with Grounded Foresight via Cross-Modal Latent Dynamics

    Mar 31, 2026Andrew Jeong, Jaemin Kim, Sebin Lee +1Robot Motion PlanningCross-Modal Representation Learning

    KAIST

  13. MRReP: Mixed Reality-based Hand-drawn Reference Path Editing Interface for Mobile Robot Navigation

    Mar 31, 2026Takumi Taki, Masato Kobayashi, Yuki UranishiRobot NavigationRobotics

    Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Osaka · D3 Center, The University of Osaka · Graduate School of Maritime Sciences, Kobe University

  14. Visual-RRT: Finding Paths toward Visual-Goals via Differentiable Rendering

    Mar 27, 2026Sebin Lee, Jumin Lee, Taeyeon Kim +3Motion PlanningRobot Motion Planning

    1KAIST · 2Samsung Electronics

  15. Intelligent Navigation and Obstacle-Aware Fabrication for Mobile Additive Manufacturing Systems

    Mar 26, 2026Yifei Li, Ruizhe Fu, Huihang Liu +3Additive ManufacturingRobot Navigation

    The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA · Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ

  16. Toward Generalist Neural Motion Planners for Robotic Manipulators: Challenges and Opportunities

    Mar 25, 2026Davood Soleymanzadeh, Ivan Lopez-Sanchez, Hao Su +3Motion PlanningRobot Motion Planning

    J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA · Lab of Biomechatronics and Intelligent Robotics, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, NY, USA · Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, NY, USA +1

  17. Path Planning and Reinforcement Learning-Driven Control of On-Orbit Free-Flying Multi-Arm Robots

    Mar 24, 2026Álvaro Belmonte-Baeza, José Luis Ramón, Leonard Felicetti +2Robotic ControlSpace Robotics

    University of Alicante, Spain · Cranfield University, UK

  18. Parallel OctoMapping: A Scalable Framework for Enhanced Path Planning in Autonomous Navigation

    Mar 23, 2026Yihui Mao, Tian Tan, Xuehui Shen +2Occupancy Grid MappingRobot Motion Planning

    Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611 USA · Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104 USA

  19. HyReach: Vision-Guided Hybrid Manipulator Reaching in Unseen Cluttered Environments

    Mar 22, 2026Shivani Kamtikar, Kendall Koe, Justin Wasserman +5Robotic ManipulationContinuum Robot Control

    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign · Skild AI

  20. CeRLP: A Cross-embodiment Robot Local Planning Framework for Visual Navigation

    Mar 20, 2026Haoyu Xi, Mingao Tan, Xinming Zhang +5Visual Robot NavigationRobot Navigation

    School of Computer Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, P. R. China · College of Information Science and Technology, Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, P. R. China

  21. Can LLMs Prove Robotic Path Planning Optimality? A Benchmark for Research-Level Algorithm Verification

    Mar 19, 2026Zhengbang Yang, Md. Tasin Tazwar, Minghan Wei +1Mathematical Reasoning BenchmarksAutomated Theorem Proving

    George Mason University · Florida Atlantic University

  22. Neural Radiance Maps for Extraterrestrial Navigation and Path Planning

    Mar 18, 2026Adam Dai, Shubh Gupta, Grace GaoRobot Motion PlanningOff-Road Robot Navigation

    Stanford University

  23. Geometry-Aligned LLM Fine-Tuning for Sequential Narrow-Opening Planning

    Mar 17, 2026Al Jaber Mahmud, Xuan WangMotion PlanningRobot Motion Planning

    George Mason University

  24. EAAE: Energy-Aware Autonomous Exploration for UAVs in Unknown 3D Environments

    Mar 16, 2026Jacob Elskamp, Moji Shi, Leonard Bauersfeld +2Mobile RoboticsUAV Navigation

    Faculty of Aerospace Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands · Institute for Informatics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

  25. Topological Motion Planning Diffusion: Generative Tangle-Free Path Planning for Tethered Robots in Obstacle-Rich Environments

    Mar 16, 2026Yifu Tian, Xinhang Xu, Thien-Minh Nguyen +1Motion PlanningRobot Motion Planning

  26. Surgical Robot, Path Planning, Joint Space, Riemannian Manifolds

    Mar 16, 2026Yoshiki Yamamoto, Maina Sogabe, Shunichi Hirahara +3Robot Motion PlanningMotion Planning

    The University of Tokyo, Department of Information Physics and Computing, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan · The University of Tokyo, Department of Precision Engineering, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan · National Institute of Informatics, Principles of Informatics Research Division, Tokyo, 101-8430, Japan

  27. Path-conditioned Reinforcement Learning-based Local Planning for Long-Range Navigation

    Mar 14, 2026Mateo Haro, Julia Richter, Fan Yang +2Robot NavigationRobot Motion Planning

    Robotic Systems Lab (RSL), ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

  28. Evaluating VLMs' Spatial Reasoning Over Robot Motion: A Step Towards Robot Planning with Motion Preferences

    Mar 13, 2026Wenxi Wu, Jingjing Zhang, Martim BrandãoVLM ReasoningVLMs for Robotics

    King’s College London · University College London

  29. CoAd: Constant-Time Planning for Continuous Goal Manipulation with Compressed Library and Online Adaptation

    Mar 12, 2026Adil Shiyas, Zhuoyun Zhong, Constantinos ChamzasRobot Motion PlanningMotion Planning

    Department of Robotics Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Worcester, MA 01609, USA

  30. Coupling Tensor Trains with Graph of Convex Sets: Effective Compression, Exploration, and Planning in the C-Space

    Mar 12, 2026Gerhard Reinerth, Riddhiman Laha, Marcello RomanoMotion PlanningRobot Motion Planning

    Technical University of Munich, Germany · Northeastern University, Boston, USA