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. 3DRO: Lidar-level SE(3) Direct Radar Odometry Using a 2D Imaging Radar and a Gyroscope

    Apr 13, 2026Cedric Le Gentil, Daniil Lisus, Timothy D. BarfootRobot State EstimationRadar-Inertial Odometry

    Robotics Institute, University of Toronto · Mobile Robotics Lab, ETH Zurich

  2. Natural Gradient Gaussian Approximation Filter on Lie Groups for Robot State Estimation

    Apr 11, 2026Tianyi Zhang, Wenhan Cao, Chang Liu +2Robot State EstimationBayesian Filtering

    School of Vehicle and Mobility, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China · College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China · School of Vehicle and Mobility and College of Artificial Intelligence, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

  3. State and Trajectory Estimation of Tensegrity Robots via Factor Graphs and Chebyshev Polynomials

    Apr 9, 2026Edgar Granados, Patrick Meng, Charles Tang +4Tensegrity RoboticsRobot State Estimation

    Dept. of Computer Science, Rutgers University, NJ, USA. · Mech. Eng. & Material Sc. Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.

  4. Complementary Filtering on SO(3) for Attitude Estimation with Scalar Measurements

    Apr 9, 2026Alessandro Melis, Soulaimane Berkane, Robert Mahony +1Robot State Estimation

    I3S, CNRS, Universit´e Cˆote d’Azur, Sophia Antipolis, France · Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Universit´e du Qu´ebec en Outaouais (UQO), QC J8X 3X7, Canada · Systems Theory and Robotics Group, School of Engineering, Australian National University, Australia +1

  5. CT-VoxelMap: Efficient Continuous-Time LiDAR-Inertial Odometry with Probabilistic Adaptive Voxel Mapping

    Apr 4, 2026Lei Zhao, Xingyi Li, Tianchen Deng +3B-Spline Trajectory RepresentationAdaptive Lidar-Inertial Odometry

  6. RAGE: A Tightly Coupled Radar-Aided Grip Estimator For Autonomous Race Cars

    Apr 3, 2026Davide Malvezzi, Nicola Musiu, Eugenio Mascaro +2Vehicle DynamicsAutonomous Racing

  7. An Asynchronous Two-Speed Kalman Filter for Real-Time UUV Cooperative Navigation Under Acoustic Delays

    Apr 3, 2026Shuyue Li, Miguel López-Benítez, Eng Gee Lim +5Kalman FilteringGNSS-Denied Localization

    School of Advanced Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China · School of Computer Science and Informatics, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK · ARIES Research Centre, Universidad Antonio de Nebrija, Madrid, Spain +3

  8. Geometrically-Constrained Radar-Inertial Odometry via Continuous Point-Pose Uncertainty Modeling

    Apr 3, 2026Wooseong Yang, Dongjae Lee, Minwoo Jung +1Simultaneous Localization and MappingInertial Odometry

    Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, SNU, Seoul, S. Korea

  9. Adaptive Learned State Estimation based on KalmanNet

    Apr 2, 2026Arian Mehrfard, Bharanidhar Duraisamy, Stefan Haag +2Robot State EstimationKalman Filtering

    Research and Development, Mercedes-Benz AG, Germany · Institute for Autonomous Driving, University of the Bundeswehr Munich, Germany

  10. Communication Outage-Resistant UUV State Estimation: A Variational History Distillation Approach

    Mar 31, 2026Shuyue Li, Miguel López-Benítez, Eng Gee Lim +5Robot State EstimationRobust Estimation

    School of Advanced Technology, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Suzhou, China · School of Engineering, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK · Jiangsu JITRI Tsingunited Intelligent Control Technology Co., Ltd., Wuxi, China +4

  11. Interacting Multiple Model Proprioceptive Odometry for Legged Robots

    Mar 31, 2026Wanlei Li, Zichang Chen, Shilei Li +2Robot State EstimationLegged Robotics

    The authors are with the Shenzhen Key Lab for Advanced Motion Control Technology and Modern Automation Equipment and the Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Intelligent Morphing Mechanisms and Adaptive Robots, School of Intelligence Science and Engineering, College of Artificial Intelligence, Harbin Institute of Technology Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518055, China.

  12. Predictive Modeling in AUV Navigation: A Perspective from Kalman Filtering

    Mar 28, 2026Zizhan Tang, Yao Liu, Jessica LiuAutonomous Underwater NavigationRobot State Estimation

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA · Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

  13. Beyond Matching to Tiles: Bridging Unaligned Aerial and Satellite Views for Vision-Only UAV Navigation

    Mar 23, 2026Kejia Liu, Haoyang Zhou, Ruoyu Xu +3UAV NavigationCross-View Geo-Localization

    College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University · State Key Laboratory of Blockchain and Data Security, Zhejiang University · Hangzhou High-Tech Zone (Binjiang) Institute of Blockchain and Data Security

  14. Radar-Inertial Odometry with Online Spatio-Temporal Calibration via Continuous-Time IMU Modeling

    Mar 20, 2026Vlaho-Josip Štironja, Luka Petrović, Juraj Peršić +2Radar-Inertial OdometryRobot State Estimation

    University of Zagreb Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Laboratory for Autonomous Systems and Mobile Robotics (LAMOR), Unska 3, HR-10000, Zagreb, Croatia · Calirad d.o.o., Augusta Harambašića 4, HR-10000, Zagreb, Croatia

  15. Proprioceptive-only State Estimation for Legged Robots with Set-Coverage Measurements of Learned Dynamics

    Mar 18, 2026Abhijeet M. Kulkarni, Ioannis Poulakakis, Guoquan HuangRobot State EstimationLegged Robotics

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA · Robotics Institute, Athena Research Center, Marousi, Greece; School of Mechanical Engineering, National Technical University of Athens, Greece; HERON–Center of Excellence in Robotics, Athens, Greece

  16. SE(3)-LIO: Smooth IMU Propagation With Jointly Distributed Poses on SE(3) Manifold for Accurate and Robust LiDAR-Inertial Odometry

    Mar 17, 2026Gunhee Shin, Seungjae Lee, Jei Kong +2LiDAR OdometryRobot State Estimation

    School of Electrical Engineering, KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology), Daejeon, 34141, South Korea · Hanwha Aerospace, 6, Pangyo-ro 319 beon-gil, Bundang-gu, Seongnam-si, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.

  17. LoCal-RIO: Radar-Inertial Odometry with Loop-Closure IMU Bias Calibration

    Mar 14, 2026Ali Alridha Abdulkarim, Mikhail Litvinov, Zein Alabdeen Abdulkarim +1Simultaneous Localization and MappingFactor Graph Optimization

    Intelligent Space Robotics Laboratory, Center for Digital Engineering, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology.

  18. Consistent and Efficient MSCKF-based LiDAR-Inertial Odometry with Inferred Cluster-to-Plane Constraints for UAVs

    Mar 13, 2026Jinwen Zhu, Xudong Zhao, Fangcheng Zhu +4LiDAR OdometryRobot State Estimation

    Meituan UAV, Beijing, China · Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Computer and Information Sciences, University of Delaware, Newark, DE

  19. NanoBench: A Multi-Task Benchmark Dataset for Nano-Quadrotor System Identification, Control, and State Estimation

    Mar 10, 2026Syed Izzat Ullah, Jose BacaBenchmark DesignNonlinear System Identification

    Department of Engineering Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, Corpus Christi, TX, USA

  20. Towards Terrain-Aware Safe Locomotion for Quadrupedal Robots Using Proprioceptive Sensing

    Mar 10, 2026Peiyu Yang, Jiatao Ding, Wei Pan +2Terrain-Aware Robot LocomotionQuadruped Locomotion

    Dynamic Legged Systems, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Italy · Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Trento, Italy · Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, UK +2

  21. 3D UAV Trajectory Estimation and Classification from Internet Videos via Language Model

    Mar 10, 2026Haoxiang Lei, Daotong Wang, Shenghai Yuan +1Robot State Estimation

  22. Uncertainty-Aware Adaptive Dynamics For Underwater Vehicle-Manipulator Robots

    Mar 6, 2026Edward Morgan, Nenyi K Dadson, Corina BarbalataRobot Dynamics IdentificationUnderwater Robotics

    The authors are with the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA

  23. Observer Design for Augmented Reality-based Teleoperation of Soft Robots

    Mar 5, 2026Jorge Francisco García-Samartín, Iago López Pérez, Emirhan Yolcu +2Robot TeleoperationSoft Robotics

    Centro de Automática y Robótica, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, c/ José Gutiérrez Abascal, nº 2, 28006, Madrid, España. · Middle East Technical University, Dumlupinar Blv No 1, 06800 Cankaya, Ankara, Türkiye.

  24. Integrated cooperative localization of heterogeneous measurement swarm: A unified data-driven method

    Mar 5, 2026Kunrui Ze, Wei Wang, Guibin Sun +3Cooperative LocalizationRobot Localization

    School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China · Zhongguancun Laboratory, Beijing 100083, China

  25. Large-Language-Model-Guided State Estimation for Partially Observable Task and Motion Planning

    Mar 4, 2026Yoonwoo Kim, Raghav Arora, Roberto Martín-Martín +3Motion PlanningRobot State Estimation

    The University of Texas at Austin · Nanyang Technological University

  26. Real-time tightly coupled GNSS and IMU integration via Factor Graph Optimization

    Mar 3, 2026Radu-Andrei Cioaca, Paul Irofti, Cristian Rusu +3Factor Graph OptimizationRobot State Estimation

    University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania · Three Tensors S.R.L., Romania · University of Bucharest, Romania +2

  27. Tensegrity Robot Endcap-Ground Contact Estimation with Symmetry-aware Heterogeneous Graph Neural Network

    Mar 3, 2026Wenzhe Tong, Yicheng Jiang, Chi Zhang +2Tensegrity RoboticsRobotics

    Robotics Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA

  28. Scalar-Measurement Attitude Estimation on SO(3)\mathbf{SO}(3) with Bias Compensation

    Mar 3, 2026Alessandro Melis, Tarek Bouazza, Hassan Alnahhal +3Robot State EstimationInertial Navigation

    I3S, CNRS, Université Côte d’Azur, Sophia Antipolis, France. · an independent researcher based in Cairo, Egypt · the Department of Technology & Innovation, Capgemini Engineering, Toulouse, 31300, France +2

  29. D-GVIO: A Buffer-Driven and Efficient Decentralized GNSS-Visual-Inertial State Estimator for Multi-Agent Systems

    Mar 2, 2026Yarong Luo, Wentao Lu, Chi Guo +1Robot State EstimationCooperative Localization

    School of Robotics, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China. · School of Electronic Information of Wuhan University, Hubei Luojia Laboratory, Wuhan 430072, China.

  30. Path Integral Particle Filtering for Hybrid Systems via Saltation Matrices

    Mar 1, 2026Karthik Shaji, Sreeranj Jayadevan, Bo Yuan +2Particle FilteringRobot State Estimation

    Graduate Student, Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering · MathWorks · PlusAI +1