Robot State Estimation

Ask about this topic

Overview

Robot state estimation combines sensor readings and models to infer quantities such as position, orientation, velocity, contact, and robot shape, which are needed for navigation and control. Common approaches include Kalman and invariant filters, particle filters, factor graphs and smoothing, and continuous-time methods that fuse asynchronous measurements from IMUs, cameras, LiDAR, radar, GNSS, encoders, and contact sensors. Learning-based methods increasingly complement these estimators by predicting motion, sensor reliability, or contact confidence, especially for legged robots and in degraded sensing conditions. A central challenge is maintaining accurate, consistent uncertainty estimates when contacts slip, sensors fail or arrive late, and the environment provides weak geometric information, without exceeding real-time computational limits.

Latest papers

CardsList

200 papers26 papers in the last four weeks, down 4% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. RESPLE2: Inertial-Informed Recursive Non-Uniform Spline Estimation for Multi-Sensor Odometry with Global Refinement

    Oct 27, 2026Ziyu Cao, William Talbot, Song Li +4Robot State EstimationMultimodal Sensor Fusion

    Department of Electrical Engineering, Linköping University, 58183 Linköping, Sweden · Robotic Systems Lab (RSL), ETH Zürich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland · Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3G8, Canada +1

  2. State estimation for a hybrid rigid-continuum space manipulator system

    Oct 27, 2026Lorenzo Ticozzi, Patricio A. Vela, Panagiotis TsiotrasRobot State EstimationSpace Robotics

    School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology · School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

  3. Camera-to-Quadruped Robot Pose Estimation from Sequential Images

    Oct 27, 2026Seobin Hwang, Ji-Seong Beom, Yeong-Jun ChoRobot State EstimationRobotic Perception

    Department of Artificial Intelligence Convergence, Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Republic of Korea

  4. SVIn+: Multi-Modal Framework for Robust Underwater State Estimation using 3D Sonar, Visual-Inertial, Water-Pressure, and DVL

    Oct 27, 2026Chinmay Burgul, Xiaoming Zhao, Yewei Huang +4Robot State EstimationUnderwater Robotics

    Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA. · Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA · Aquaculture Robotics and Automation Group, SINTEF Ocean

  5. Tilt-Rotor Quadcopter with Learned Residual Control and Mode-Dependent State Estimation

    Oct 22, 2026Ninad Joshi, Prabhat KumarQuadrotor ControlFeedback Control

    Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, Hyderabad, India

  6. In-Context Learning World Models for Robot Dual-Arm Manipulation of Soft Garment with Partial Observations

    Oct 22, 2026Hengyi Sim, Quentin Rouxel, Dennis Hong +2World Models for RoboticsRobotic Manipulation

    Collaborative and Versatile Robots (CLOVER) Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, T-Stone Robotics Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. · Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, USA · Department of Advanced Robotics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy +1

  7. RoPE-Flow: Monocular Vision-based Robot Pose Estimation via 2D Graph-Conditioned 3D Flow Matching

    Oct 15, 2026Liangjing Shao, Wanhao Liu, Zhiwei Fang +6Robot State EstimationRobotic Perception

    Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong · EACV Research Center, Shenzhen Loop Area Institute · Xi’an Jiaotong University

  8. A Response to the Reply Presented in "A Fair Comparison of Sliding-Mode and Immersion-and-Invariance Observers"

    Oct 14, 2026Luis Cervantes-Pérez, Víctor Santibáñez, Jesús Sandoval +2Sliding Mode ControlAdaptive Control

    Tecnológico Nacional de México / I. T. de La Laguna, Torreón, Coahuila, México · Tecnológico Nacional de México / I. T. de La Paz, La Paz, Baja California Sur, México · Departamento de Ingeniería Eléctrica y Electrónica / Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, CDMX, Ciudad de México, México

  9. Navigation by Skylight Polarization via Rayleigh Model Optimization on a Road Vehicle

    Oct 14, 2026Ben Potter, Eslam Mounier, Aboelmagd Noureldin +2Robot NavigationRobot State Estimation

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON K7L 3N6, Canada · Department of Computer and Systems Engineering, Ain Shams University, Cairo 11535, Egypt · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, ON K7K 7B4, Canada +2

  10. Towards Certifiable State Estimation under Observability Degeneracy

    Oct 14, 2026Baoshan SongRobot State EstimationSemidefinite Programming

  11. RingNav: Task-Shaped Circular Memory for Visual Heading

    Oct 13, 2026Naitri Rajyaguru, Aryan Tajne, Stephen Jardim +2Robot NavigationRobot State Estimation

    University of Maryland, College Park

  12. Contractor Filters

    Oct 13, 2026Simon RohouRobot State EstimationRobust Estimation

    ENSTA, Lab-STICC\_ROBEX

  13. LAG-IO: Multi-IMU State Estimation for Legged Robots Using Factor Graphs

    Oct 13, 2026Yicheng Zhou, Longwen Chen, Qinghua Yu +3Robot State EstimationInertial Odometry

  14. MSC: Multi-Stage Caster-aware Control Framework with Uncertainty-Aware NMPC and RL-based Execution Layer

    Oct 12, 2026Jinho Park, Jeongtae Lee, Jeonghyeok Lim +2Robot Trajectory TrackingNonlinear MPC

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of Korea

  15. Global Optimality of Pose Graph Optimization

    Oct 10, 2026Shuan Ding, Ruishuang Chen, Mengfan Cao +1Pose Graph OptimizationRobotic Optimization

    Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of FullyActuated System Control Theory and Technology, and the School of Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China · Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China

  16. ToF-Wheel Odometry: Navigating Degeneration of Localization With Limited Sensing Capabilities

    Oct 10, 2026Xu Yang, Wenhao Li, Zhengyu Wei +3Robot State EstimationRobot Localization

    Deptrum Ltd.

  17. RAGNAROK: Radar-Aided Gravity-Normalized Alignment for Robust Open Keyframe-based Radar-Visual-Kinematic-Inertial SLAM

    Oct 8, 2026Hanjun Kim, Chiyun Noh, Sangwoo Jung +5Simultaneous Localization and MappingRobot State Estimation

    Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, SNU, Seoul, S. Korea · Mobile Robotics Lab, School of Computation, Information and Technology (CIT) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), 80333 Munich, Germany, and with the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) · Mobile Robotics Lab, ETH Zurich, 80892 Zurich, Switzerland

  18. Belief-Space Planning with Planner-Conditioned Estimator Error under Intermittent Observations

    Oct 6, 2026Peter M. Donley, Joseph L. MooreBelief-Space PlanningRobot State Estimation

    Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering

  19. Embedded Bare-Metal Radar-Inertial Odometry

    Oct 5, 2026Nicolai Adil Øyen Aatif, Morten Nissov, Kostas AlexisUAV NavigationRadar-Inertial Odometry

    Department of Engineering Cybernetics Norwegian University of Science and Technology O. S. Bragstads Plass 2D, 7034 Trondheim, Norway

  20. Block Disentanglement in CRL: Bridging Identifiability and Visual State Estimation

    Oct 5, 2026Emre Acartürk, Pranamya Kulkarni, Puranjay Datta +3Causal Representation LearningCausal Identifiability

    Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Troy, NY, USA · Swiss AI, EPFL Lausanne, Switzerland · University of Delaware Newark, DE, USA

  21. GR-LIO: A Local Ground-Aware LiDAR-Inertial Odometry System Using Body-to-Ground Height

    Oct 4, 2026Zhixin Zhang, Yang Song, Liang Zhao +3LiDAR OdometryRobot State Estimation

    Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, U.K. · School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh EH8 9AB, U.K. · Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, U.K.

  22. Who Went Where When on the Lunar Surface: Forensic Trajectory Analysis to Identify Byzantine Rovers

    Oct 2, 2026Lachlan Holden, Feras Dayoub, Melissa de Zwart +2Trajectory InferenceRobot State Estimation

    AI for Space Group · Andy Thomas Centre for Space Resources, Adelaide University, Australia.

  23. Magnetic based In-situ Self 3D Pose Estimation for a Modular Soft Tendon-Driven Continuum Robot via IMU-Fusion

    Sep 30, 2026Zheng Cao, Guo Ning Sue, Xiangyun Bu +3Continuum Robot ControlRobot State Estimation

    Carnegie Mellon University

  24. Towards Agile Vision-Based Multi-UAV Flight: Revisiting State Estimation

    Sep 30, 2026Michal Pliska, Matouš Vrba, Ondřej Víta +3Aerial RoboticsKalman Filtering

    Multi-robot Systems Group, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic

  25. Benchmarking EMlog Calibration for Autonomous Surface Vehicles

    Sep 30, 2026Samuel Cohen-Salmon, Itzik KleinModel CalibrationRobot State Estimation

    The Hatter Department of Marine Technologies Charney School of Marine Sciences, University of Haifa Haifa, Israel

  26. LBDU-VIO: Learned Bias Dynamics and Uncertainty for Visual-Inertial Odometry with Unreliable Vision

    Sep 30, 2026Qizhi Guo, Junning Lyu, Defu Lin +1Kalman FilteringVisual-Inertial Odometry

    School of Aerospace Engineering and the Beijing Key Laboratory of UAV Autonomous Control, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China

  27. Observability Analysis and Online Calibration of Visual-Inertial-Wheel Odometry for 4WIS4WID Mobile Robots

    Sep 29, 2026Branimir Ćaran, Vladimir Milić, Bojan Šekoranja +1Visual-Inertial OdometryRobot State Estimation

    Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, 10000, Croatia · Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb, 10000, Croatia

  28. A QCQP-Representable IMU Pre-Integration Factor for Certifiable State Estimation

    Sep 29, 2026Utkarsh Rai, Zhexin Xu, Bang-Shien Chen +1Constrained OptimizationRobot State Estimation

    Robust Autonomy Lab, Institute for Experiential Robotics, Northeastern University, 360 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115, USA

  29. Speed in the Blind Spot: An Interpretability Analysis of Dynamic Perception in VLMs for Autonomous Driving

    Sep 29, 2026Katharina Winter, Stefan Englmeier, Fabian B. FlohrVLMs for Autonomous DrivingVLM Interpretability

    Munich University of Applied Sciences, Intelligent Vehicles Lab (IVL), 80335 Munich, Germany

  30. Natural State-Prediction Accuracy can Hide Weak Controlled Responsiveness in VLA Readouts

    Sep 28, 2026Hyungjoon Kim, Wonbin Son, Mi Young Lee +2Robotic Policy EvaluationVision-Language-Action Models

    Changwon National University · Chung-Ang University