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

CardsList

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

  1. DiffusionAnything: End-to-End In-context Diffusion Learning for Unified Navigation and Pre-Grasp Motion

    Mar 27, 2026Iana Zhura, Yara Mahmoud, Jeffrin Sam +4Visual Robot NavigationDiffusion-Based Planning

    The authors are with the Intelligent Space Robotics Laboratory, Center for Digital Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology.

  2. Line-of-Sight-Constrained Multi-Robot Mapless Navigation via Polygonal Visible Regions

    Mar 27, 2026Ruofei Bai, Shenghai Yuan, Xinhang Xu +5Robot NavigationMulti-Robot Coordination

  3. SpatialAnt: Autonomous Zero-Shot Robot Navigation via Active Scene Reconstruction and Visual Anticipation

    Mar 27, 2026Jiwen Zhang, Xiangyu Shi, Siyuan Wang +3Robot NavigationVision-Language Navigation

    Fudan University · Adelaide University · University of Southern California +1

  4. Can Vision Foundation Models Navigate? Zero-Shot Real-World Evaluation and Lessons Learned

    Mar 26, 2026Maeva Guerrier, Karthik Soma, Jana Pavlasek +1Visual NavigationRobot Navigation

    Polytechnique Montreal

  5. RHINO-AR: An Augmented Reality Exhibit for Teaching Mobile Robotics Concepts in Museums

    Mar 26, 2026Nils Dengler, Tim Graf, Leif Van Holland +3Augmented RealityMobile Robotics

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

  6. 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

  7. IntentReact: Guiding Reactive Object-Centric Navigation via Topological Intent

    Mar 26, 2026Yanmei Jiao, Anpeng Lu, Wenhan Hu +4Robot NavigationObject-Goal Navigation

    Yanmei Jiao, Anpeng Lu and Wenhan Hu are with the School of Information Science and Engineering, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, P.R. China. · Rong Xiong and Yue Wang are with the State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control and Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, P.R. China. · Huajin Tang is with Neuromorphic Computing and Robotic Cognition Lab, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, P.R. China. +1

  8. Integrating Deep RL and Bayesian Inference for ObjectNav in Mobile Robotics

    Mar 26, 2026João Castelo-Branco, José Santos-Victor, Alexandre BernardinoObject-Goal NavigationRobot Navigation

    Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, Portugal · Institute For Systems and Robotics, Lisbon, Portugal

  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. ReMemNav: Memory-Based Decision Correction and Target Verification for Zero-Shot Object Navigation

    Mar 25, 2026Feng Wu, Wei Zuo, Wenliang Yang +3Robot NavigationVision-Language Navigation

    Fudan University · Tongji University

  11. Task-Aware Positioning for Improvisational Tasks in Mobile Construction Robots via an AI Agent with Multi-LMM Modules

    Mar 24, 2026Seongju Jang, Francis Baek, SangHyun LeeRobotic ConstructionRobot Navigation

    Ph.D. Student, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, 2350 Hayward St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 · Assistant Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, North Avenue, Atlanta GA 30332 · Robert B. Harris Collegiate Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan, 2350 Hayward St, Ann Arbor, MI 48109

  12. CATNAV: Cached Vision-Language Traversability for Efficient Zero-Shot Robot Navigation

    Mar 24, 2026Aditya Potnis, Francisco Affonso, Shreya Gummadi +2Robot Traversability EstimationRobot Navigation

    Field Robotics Engineering and Science Hub (FRESH), Illinois Autonomous Farm, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), IL

  13. Variable-Resolution Virtual Maps for Autonomous Exploration with Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USVs)

    Mar 24, 2026Ye Li, Yewei Huang, Yongchang Xie +4Simultaneous Localization and MappingMobile Robotics

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, University College London, London, UK · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ, USA · Department of Computer Science, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

  14. Cross-Modal Reinforcement Learning for Navigation with Degraded Depth Measurements

    Mar 23, 2026Omkar Sawant, Luca Zanatta, Grzegorz Malczyk +1Robot NavigationCross-Modal Learning

    Department of Engineering Cybernetics, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Norway

  15. Reasoning Systems for Semantic Navigation in Mobile Robots

    Mar 23, 2026Jonathan Crespo, Ramón Barber, O. M. Mozos +2Robot NavigationSemantic Mapping

    University of Carlos III of Madrid, 28911, Spain. · Technical University of Cartagena, 30202, Spain. · Institute of Artificial Intelligent at the University of Bremen, 28359, Germany.

  16. IGV-RRT: Prior-Real-Time Observation Fusion for Active Object Search in Changing Environments

    Mar 23, 2026Wei Zhang, Ping Gong, Yujie Wang +7Robot NavigationObject-Goal Navigation

    The School of Control Science and Engineering, Shandong University · Department of Data and Systems Engineering, HKU

  17. Can a Robot Walk the Robotic Dog: Triple-Zero Collaborative Navigation for Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Systems

    Mar 23, 2026Yaxuan Wang, Yifan Xiang, Ke Li +5Robot NavigationMulti-Robot Systems

    Yuanpei College, Peking University · School of Computer Science, Peking University · School of Computer Science, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications +2

  18. Enhancing Vision-Based Policies with Omni-View and Cross-Modality Knowledge Distillation for Mobile Robots

    Mar 21, 2026Kai Li, Shiyu ZhaoVision-Based Robot ControlMobile Robotics

    College of Computer Science and Technology at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China. · School of Engineering at Westlake University, Hangzhou, China.

  19. Semantic Audio-Visual Navigation in Continuous Environments

    Mar 20, 2026Yichen Zeng, Hebaixu Wang, Meng Liu +4Audio-Visual NavigationMultimodal Transformer

    Wuhan University · Zhongguancun Academy · Shandong Jianzhu University +4

  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. SR-Nav: Spatial Relationships Matter for Zero-shot Object Goal Navigation

    Mar 19, 2026Leyuan Fang, Zan Mao, Zijing Wang +1Object-Goal NavigationRobot Navigation

    School of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hunan University, Changsha, China, 410114, China

  22. AERR-Nav: Adaptive Exploration-Recovery-Reminiscing Strategy for Zero-Shot Object Navigation

    Mar 18, 2026Jingzhi Huang, Junkai Huang, Haoyang Yang +2Robot NavigationObject-Goal Navigation

    Hong Kong Polytechnic University · Institute of automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences · Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou)

  23. AgentVLN: Towards Agentic Vision-and-Language Navigation

    Mar 18, 2026Zihao Xin, Wentong Li, Yixuan Jiang +6Vision-Language NavigationRobot Navigation

    Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics · Shandong University · Zhejiang University

  24. Interpreting Context-Aware Human Preferences for Multi-Objective Robot Navigation

    Mar 18, 2026Tharun Sethuraman, Subham Agrawal, Nils Dengler +3Robot NavigationRobot Policy Adaptation

    Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg, Germany · University of Bonn, Germany · Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, Germany

  25. OmniVLN: Omnidirectional 3D Perception and Token-Efficient LLM Reasoning for Visual-Language Navigation across Air and Ground Platforms

    Mar 18, 2026Zhongyuang Liu, Min He, Shaonan Yu +5Vision-Language NavigationRobot Navigation

    CertaintyX. · the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798. · the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213 USA. +1

  26. Full Stack Navigation, Mapping, and Planning for the Lunar Autonomy Challenge

    Mar 18, 2026Adam Dai, Asta Wu, Keidai Iiyama +4Robot NavigationSpace Robotics

    Stanford University

  27. Visual SLAM with DEM Anchoring for Lunar Surface Navigation

    Mar 18, 2026Adam Dai, Guillem Casadesus Vila, Grace GaoSimultaneous Localization and MappingVisual SLAM

    Stanford University William F. Durand Building 496 Lomita Mall Stanford, CA 94305

  28. Contingency-Aware Planning via Certified Neural Hamilton-Jacobi Reachability

    Mar 17, 2026Kasidit Muenprasitivej, Derya AksaraySafe Motion PlanningRobot Navigation

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA, 02115

  29. FlatLands: Generative Floormap Completion From a Single Egocentric View

    Mar 16, 2026Subhransu S. Bhattacharjee, Dylan Campbell, Rahul ShomeRobot NavigationBird's-Eye-View Representation

    School of Computing, The Australian National University

  30. NavGSim: High-Fidelity Gaussian Splatting Simulator for Large-Scale Navigation

    Mar 16, 2026Jiahang Liu, Yuanxing Duan, Jiazhao Zhang +4Robotics SimulationRobot Navigation

    Peking University · Galbot · BAAI