Robot Navigation

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Overview

Robot navigation combines sensing and localization with route planning and motion control, from indoor mobile robots and legged platforms to drones, vehicles, and medical devices. Common approaches include SLAM and geometric planners such as A* and model-predictive control, alongside reinforcement learning, imitation learning, and vision-language policies that use semantic maps, memory, or predicted futures. Methods are tested in simulation and on physical robots, with benchmarks such as Habitat HM3D and MP3D for object navigation and R2R-CE for language-guided routes. A central challenge is making long-horizon decisions that remain safe and efficient when perception is uncertain, environments change, and policies transfer from simulation to real robots.

Latest papers

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557 papers103 papers in the last four weeks, up 29% on the four weeks before. 0.6% of all new papers.

  1. Multimodal embodiment-aware navigation transformer

    Apr 21, 2026Louis Dezons, Quentin Picard, Rémi Marsal +2Off-Road Robot NavigationRobot Navigation

    AMIAD Pˆole Recherche, Palaiseau, France · U2IS, ENSTA, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Palaiseau, France

  2. Enhancing Glass Surface Reconstruction via Depth Prior for Robot Navigation

    Apr 20, 2026Jiamin Zheng, Jingwen Yu, Guangcheng Chen +1Metric Depth Estimation3D Reconstruction

    Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Robotics and Computer Vision, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China · CKS Robotics Institute, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR, China

  3. A Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability-Guided Search Framework for Efficient and Safe Indoor Planar Robot Navigation

    Apr 20, 2026Hanyang Hu, Cameron Siu, Mo ChenReachability AnalysisRobot Navigation

    Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6, Canada

  4. Think before Go: Hierarchical Reasoning for Image-goal Navigation

    Apr 19, 2026Pengna Li, Kangyi Wu, Shaoqing Xu +5Visual NavigationRobot Policy Learning

    National Key Laboratory of Human-Machine Hybrid Augmented Intelligence, National Engineering Research Center for Visual Information and Applications, Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Xi’an Jiaotong University · Xiaomi EV · University of Macau +1

  5. Intent-aligned Autonomous Spacecraft Guidance via Reasoning Models

    Apr 19, 2026Yuji Takubo, Simone D'AmicoTrajectory OptimizationLLM Planning

    Stanford University · Lomita Mall, Stanford, CA, 94305 · Stanford University 496 Lomita Mall, Stanford, CA, 94305

  6. 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

  7. LiDAR-based Crowd Navigation with Visible Edge Group Representation

    Apr 17, 2026Allan Wang, Aaron SteinfeldRobot NavigationSafe Robot Navigation

    1Miraikan, the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, Tokyo, Japan. · 2the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA.

  8. 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

  9. Reliability-Guided RGB-D Sensor Fusion for Glare-Resilient Navigation Costmaps

    Apr 14, 2026Shang-En Tsai, Wei-Cheng SunDepth EstimationRobot Navigation

    Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, Chang Jung Christian University

  10. A Survey of Spatial Memory Representations for Efficient Robot Navigation

    Apr 13, 2026Ma. Madecheen S. Pangaliman, Steven S. Sison, Erwin P. Quilloy +1Robotic Spatial MemoryRobot Navigation

    University of the Philippines Diliman · University of Santo Tomas

  11. VLN-NF: Feasibility-Aware Vision-and-Language Navigation with False-Premise Instructions

    Apr 12, 2026Hung-Ting Su, Ting-Jun Wang, Jia-Fong Yeh +2VLN BenchmarksVision-Language Navigation

    National Taiwan University · DRIC · National Tsing Hua University

  12. HTNav: A Hybrid Navigation Framework with Tiered Structure for Urban Aerial Vision-and-Language Navigation

    Apr 10, 2026Chengjie Fan, Cong Pan, Zijian Liu +2Visual NavigationRobot Navigation

    Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China Key Laboratory of Brain-Machine Intelligence Technology, Ministry of Education, China

  13. "Why This Avoidance Maneuver?" Contrastive Explanations in Human-Supervised Maritime Autonomous Navigation

    Apr 9, 2026Joel Jose, Andreas Madsen, Andreas Brandsæter +2Explainable Motion PlanningCounterfactual Explanations

    Department of ICT and Natural Sciences, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Ålesund, Norway. · Department of Ocean Operations and Civil Engineering, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Ålesund, Norway. · Department of Science and Mathematics, Volda University College (HVO), Volda, Norway. +1

  14. CADENCE: Context-Adaptive Depth Estimation for Navigation and Computational Efficiency

    Apr 8, 2026Timothy K Johnsen, Marco LevoratoPower-Efficient InferenceAdaptive Computation

    Computational Science joint program with San Diego State University and The University of California, Irvine in CA, USA · Computer Science department at the University of California, Irvine in CA, USA

  15. Differentiable Environment-Trajectory Co-Optimization for Safe Multi-Agent Navigation

    Apr 8, 2026Zhan Gao, Gabriele Fadini, Stelian Coros +1Robot NavigationSafe Robot Navigation

    Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge, UK · Zurich University of Applied Sciences, ZHAW, Winterthur, Swizerland · Computational Robotics Lab, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zurich, Switzerland

  16. Designing Privacy-Preserving Visual Perception for Robot Navigation Based on User Privacy Preferences

    Apr 7, 2026Xuying Huang, Sicong Pan, Delphine Reinhardt +1Robot NavigationRobotics

    Humanoid Robots Lab, University of Bonn, the Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence and the Center for Robotics, Bonn, Germany · Computer Security and Privacy, University of Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany

  17. Towards Edge Intelligence via Autonomous Navigation: A Robot-Assisted Data Collection Approach

    Apr 4, 2026Tingting Huang, Yingyang Chen, Sixian Qin +3Robotic Data CollectionRobot Navigation

    College of Information Science and Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China · College of Physics and Information Engineering, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350108, China · School of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou 510006, China +1

  18. FSUNav: A Cerebrum-Cerebellum Architecture for Fast, Safe, and Universal Zero-Shot Goal-Oriented Navigation

    Apr 3, 2026Mingao Tan, Yiyang Li, Shanze Wang +2Open-Vocabulary Object 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

  19. STRNet: Visual Navigation with Spatio-Temporal Representation through Dynamic Graph Aggregation

    Apr 3, 2026Hao Ren, Zetong Bi, Yiming Zeng +3Robot NavigationVision-Based Robot Control

    Sun Yat-sen University · Insta360 Research · Wuhan University

  20. AURA: Multimodal Shared Autonomy for Real-World Urban Navigation

    Apr 2, 2026Yukai Ma, Honglin He, Selina Song +2Shared AutonomyRobot Navigation

    University of California, Los Angeles · Zhejiang University

  21. Robust Autonomous Control of a Magnetic Millirobot in In Vitro Cardiac Flow

    Apr 2, 2026Anuruddha Bhattacharjee, Xinhao Chen, Lamar O. Mair +3Robotic ControlRobotics

    Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA. · Division of Magnetic Manipulation and Particle Research, Weinberg Medical Physics, Inc., Rockville, MD 20852, USA. · Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA.

  22. STAR: Mitigating Cascading Errors in Spatial Reasoning via Turn-point Alignment and Segment-level DPO

    Apr 1, 2026Pukun Zhao, Longxiang Wang, Chen Chen +4Spatial Reasoning in Language ModelsSpatial Reasoning

    Guangdong University of Finance and Economics · Chongqing University · Westlake University +1

  23. Learning Humanoid Navigation from Human Data

    Apr 1, 2026Weizhuo Wang, Yanjie Ze, C. Karen Liu +1Robot NavigationRobot Imitation Learning

    W. Wang, Y. Ze, C. K. Liu, and M. Kennedy III are with Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA

  24. Real Time Local Wind Inference for Robust Autonomous Navigation

    Apr 1, 2026Spencer FolkAerial RoboticsRobot Navigation

    Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania

  25. 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

  26. Bootstrap Perception Under Hardware Depth Failure for Indoor Robot Navigation

    Mar 30, 2026Nishant Pushparaju, Vivek Mattam, Aliasghar ArabIndoor Robot NavigationRobot Navigation

  27. osmAG-Nav: A Hierarchical Semantic Topometric Navigation Stack for Robust Lifelong Indoor Autonomy

    Mar 30, 2026Yongqi Zhang, Jiajie Zhang, Chengqian Li +2Robot NavigationIndoor Robot Navigation

    School of Computer Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, 393 Huaxia Road, Shanghai, 201210, Shanghai, China.

  28. LLM-Enabled Low-Altitude UAV Natural Language Navigation via Signal Temporal Logic Specification Translation and Repair

    Mar 29, 2026Yuqi Ping, Huahao Ding, Tianhao Liang +6UAV NavigationRobot Navigation

    Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Space-Aerial Networking and Intelligent Sensing, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China · Information Systems Technology and Design, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372 · School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, China +1

  29. SCRAMPPI: Contingency-Constrained Planning using Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability

    Mar 27, 2026Raj Harshit Srirangam, Leonard Jung, Rohith Poola +1Safe Motion PlanningRobot Navigation

    Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA

  30. 120 Minutes and a Laptop: Minimalist Image-goal Navigation via Unsupervised Exploration and Offline RL

    Mar 27, 2026Xiaoming Liu, Borong Zhang, Qingbiao Li +1Robot NavigationImage-Goal Navigation

    Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau