Robot State Estimation

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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

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

  1. Parallel Reference-Centric Continuous-Time Relative Localization with Augmented Clamped Non-Uniform B-Splines

    Feb 25, 2026Jiadong Lu, Zhehan Li, Tao Han +4Relative Pose EstimationMulti-Robot Systems

    State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China. · Huzhou Institute of Zhejiang University, Huzhou, 313000, China. · The School of Automation and Intellegent Sensing, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China. +1

  2. Environment-Aware Learning of Smooth GNSS Covariance Dynamics for Autonomous Racing

    Feb 24, 2026Y. Deemo Chen, Arion Zimmermann, Thomas A. Berrueta +1Contraction TheoryCovariance Estimation

    Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA.

  3. Denoising Particle Filters: Learning State Estimation with Single-Step Objectives

    Feb 23, 2026Lennart Röstel, Berthold BäumlRobot State EstimationParticle Filtering

    Learning AI for Dextrous Robots Lab, Technical University of Munich, Germany.

  4. Distributed and Consistent Multi-Robot Visual-Inertial-Ranging Odometry on Lie Groups

    Feb 22, 2026Ziwei Kang, Yizhi ZhouRobot State EstimationRobot Localization

    School of Control and Computer Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, VA 102206, China · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA

  5. GrandTour: A Legged Robotics Dataset in the Wild for Multi-Modal Perception and State Estimation

    Feb 20, 2026Turcan Tuna, Jonas Frey, Frank Fu +5Legged RoboticsSimultaneous Localization and Mapping

    Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, Zurich 8092, Switzerland · 1ETH Zurich, Switzerland · 2Stanford University, USA +1

  6. Optically Sensorized Electro-Ribbon Actuator (OS-ERA)

    Feb 19, 2026Carolina Gay, Petr Trunin, Diana Cafiso +3Soft RoboticsRobot State Estimation

    C. Gay, P. Trunin, D. Cafiso and L. Beccai are with the Soft BioRobotics and Perception Lab of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Morego 30 16163, Genova, Italy · Y. Xu and M. Taghavi are with the Department of Bioengineering, Imperial College London, SW7 2BX London, U.K.

  7. Contact-Anchored Proprioceptive Odometry for Legged and Wheel-Legged Robots

    Feb 19, 2026Minxing Sun, Yao MaoLegged RoboticsRobot State Estimation

    Institute of Optics and Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu, China · Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R), Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore. · Shenzhen Astralldynamics Technology.

  8. Sensor Query Schedule and Sensor Noise Covariances for Accuracy-constrained Trajectory Estimation

    Feb 18, 2026Abhishek Goudar, Angela P. SchoelligRobot State Estimation

    The authors are with the Learning Systems and Robotics Lab at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, and the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, Canada. They are also affiliated with the University of Toronto Robotics Institute, the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI), and the Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.

  9. System Identification under Constraints and Disturbance: A Bayesian Estimation Approach

    Feb 18, 2026Sergi Martinez, Steve Tonneau, Carlos MastalliRobot System IdentificationSystem Identification

    Robot Motor Intelligence (RoMI) Lab, Heriot-Watt University, U.K. · Informatics School, University of Edinburgh, U.K.

  10. A Comparison of Bayesian Prediction Techniques for Mobile Robot Trajectory Tracking

    Feb 17, 2026Jose Luis Peralta-Cabezas, Miguel Torres-Torriti, Marcelo Guarini-HermannRobot Trajectory TrackingRobot State Estimation

    Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Vicuña Mackenna 4860, Casilla 306-22, Santiago, Chile

  11. Onboard UAV State Estimation for Fast Flights Without External Localization Systems: A2RL Drone Racing Finalist Approach

    Feb 2, 2026Filip Novák, Matěj Petrlík, Matej Novosad +3Robot State EstimationVisual-Inertial Odometry

    Department of Cybernetics, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic.

  12. Super4DR: 4D Radar-centric Self-supervised Odometry and Gaussian-based Map Optimization

    Dec 10, 2025Zhiheng Li, Weihua Wang, Qiang Shen +2Simultaneous Localization and Mapping3D Gaussian Splatting

    Zheng Fang*

  13. GaRLILEO: Gravity-aligned Radar-Leg-Inertial Enhanced Odometry

    Nov 17, 2025Chiyun Noh, Sangwoo Jung, Hanjun Kim +3Legged RoboticsInertial Odometry

    Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, SNU, Seoul, S. Korea · Robotics and AI Institute, Cambridge, USA

  14. A Sliding-Window Filter for Online Continuous-Time Continuum Robot State Estimation

    Oct 30, 2025Spencer Teetaert, Sven Lilge, Jessica Burgner-Kahrs +1Robot State EstimationBayesian Filtering

    University of Toronto Robotics Institute, Toronto, ON, Canada

  15. Diffusion Denoiser-Aided Gyrocompassing

    Jul 28, 2025Gershy Ben-Arie, Daniel Engelsman, Rotem Dror +1Diffusion-Based DenoisingRobot State Estimation

    The Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, University of Haifa, Israel · a · b The Department of Information Systems, University of Haifa, Israel

  16. SCREP: Scene Coordinate Regression and Evidential Learning-based Perception-Aware Trajectory Generation

    Jul 10, 2025Juyeop Han, Lukas Lao Beyer, Guilherme V. Cavalheiro +1Trajectory OptimizationScene Coordinate Regression

    Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

  17. DogLegs: Robust Proprioceptive State Estimation for Legged Robots Using Multiple Leg-Mounted IMUs

    Mar 6, 2025Yibin Wu, Jian Kuang, Shahram Khorshidi +4Legged RoboticsRobot State Estimation

    Center for Robotics, University of Bonn, Germany · GNSS Research Center, Wuhan University, China · Humanoid Robots Lab, University of Bonn, Germany +1

  18. Observability-Aware Control for Quadrotor Formation Flight with Range-only Measurement

    Nov 6, 2024H S Helson Go, Ching Lok Chong, Longhao Qian +1Multi-Robot Formation ControlCooperative Localization

    Institute for Aerospace Studies, University of Toronto, 4925 Dufferin St., North York, Ontario, Canada, M3H 5T6 · Oxford University, OCIAM

  19. The Kinetics Observer: A Tightly Coupled Estimator for Legged Robots

    Jun 19, 2024Arnaud Demont, Mehdi Benallegue, Abdelaziz Benallegue +5Robot State EstimationLegged Robotics

    CNRS-AIST JRL, LISV · CNRS-AIST JRL · LISV, UVSQ +1

  20. Estimating Uncertain Spatial Relationships in Robotics

    Mar 27, 2013Randall Smith, Matthew Self, Peter CheesemanUncertainty QuantificationRobot State Estimation

    SRI International 333 Ravenswood Avenue Menlo Park, California 94025 · General Motors Research Laboratories Warren, Michigan · UC Berkeley +1