Robot Trajectory Tracking

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Overview

Robot trajectory tracking studies how a robot can follow a desired path or time-varying motion, which is essential for tasks such as manipulation, navigation, flight, and locomotion. Common approaches include feedback control such as PID, backstepping, and sliding-mode methods; model-predictive control; and adaptive, learning-based, and iterative-learning controllers that compensate for uncertain dynamics or repeated errors. Work spans mobile robots, aerial vehicles, manipulators, soft robots, and humanoids, with attention to sensing, actuator limits, collision avoidance, and real-time computation. A central challenge is balancing precise tracking with robustness and safety when models, terrain, payloads, contact, or reference motions change.

Latest papers

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137 papers17 papers in the last four weeks, down 15% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. PhyGile: Physics-Prefix Guided Motion Generation for Agile General Humanoid Motion Tracking

    Mar 13, 2026Jiacheng Bao, Haoran Yang, Yucheng Xin +7Robot Trajectory TrackingHumanoid Robot Control

    Northwestern Polytechnical University · Shanghai AI Laboratory · University of Science and Technology of China +4

  2. Hierarchical Task Model Predictive Control for Sequential Mobile Manipulation Tasks

    Mar 10, 2026Xintong Du, Siqi Zhou, Angela P. SchoelligHierarchical Robot ControlMobile Manipulation

    Learning Systems and Robotics Lab (www.learnsyslab.org) at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, and the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, Canada · University of Toronto Robotics Institute · Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI) +1

  3. Trajectory Tracking Control Design for Autonomous Helicopters with Guaranteed Error Bounds

    Mar 9, 2026Philipp Schitz, Johann C. Dauer, Paolo MercorelliRobot Trajectory TrackingAerial Robotics

    Institute of Flight Systems, German Aerospace Center (DLR), 38108 Braunschweig, Germany · Institute for Production Technology and Systems, Leuphana University of Lueneburg, 21335 Lueneburg, Germany

  4. Control Lyapunov Functions for Underactuated Soft Robots

    Mar 5, 2026Huy Pham, Zach J. PattersonRobotic ControlSoft Robotics

    Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Case Western Reserve University

  5. Residual RL-MPC for Robust Microrobotic Cell Pushing Under Time-Varying Flow

    Mar 5, 2026Yanda Yang, Sambeeta DasRobot Trajectory TrackingContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716, USA

  6. Accelerating Sampling-Based Control via Learned Linear Koopman Dynamics

    Mar 5, 2026Wenjian Hao, Yuxuan Fang, Zehui Lu +1Robotic ControlRobot Trajectory Tracking

    independent researcher

  7. Learning to Localize Reference Trajectories in Image-Space for Visual Navigation

    Feb 21, 2026Finn Lukas Busch, Matti Vahs, Quantao Yang +4Robot Trajectory TrackingRobot Navigation

    Division of Robotics, Perception, and Learning, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, and also affiliated with Digital Futures

  8. Quasi-Periodic Gaussian Process Predictive Iterative Learning Control

    Feb 20, 2026Unnati Nigam, Radhendushka Srivastava, Faezeh Marzbanrad +1Iterative Learning ControlRobotic Control

    IITB-Monash Research Academy, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India · Department of Mathematics, IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India · Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, Monash University, Clayton, Melbourne, Australia

  9. Lyapunov-Based PI-Like Control for Robust Trajectory Tracking of a Four-Wheel Independently Driven and Steered Robot: Design and Experimental Validation

    Feb 17, 2026Branimir Ćaran, Vladimir Milić, Marko Švaco +1PID ControlRobot Trajectory Tracking

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

  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. Tilt-Ropter: A Fully Actuated Hybrid Aerial-Terrestrial Vehicle with Tilt Rotors and Passive Wheels

    Feb 2, 2026Ruoyu Wang, Xuchen Liu, Zongzhou Wu +3Robotic ControlRobot Trajectory Tracking

    Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong · Faculty of Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong · Peng Cheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

  12. DWPP: Dynamic Window Pure Pursuit Considering Velocity and Acceleration Constraints

    Jan 21, 2026Fumiya Ohnishi, Masaki TakahashiRobot Trajectory Tracking

  13. Simplifying ROS2 controllers with a modular architecture for robot-agnostic reference generation

    Jan 13, 2026Davide Risi, Vincenzo Petrone, Antonio Langella +3Robotic ControlRobot Trajectory Tracking

    Department of Information Engineering, Electrical Engineering and Applied Mathematics (DIEM), University of Salerno, 84084 Fisciano, Italy

  14. Temporal Cascading of Planning and Control for Quadrotor MPC

    Dec 13, 2025Rudolf Reiter, Chao Qin, Leonard Bauersfeld +1Robot Trajectory TrackingAerial Robotics

    Robotics and Perception Group, Department of Informatics, University of Zurich, Andreasstrasse 15, 8050 Zurich, Switzerland · Institute for Aerospace Studies, University of Toronto, 4925 Dufferin Street, Toronto, ON M3H 5T6, Canada

  15. Differentiable Physics-Informed Adaptive Koopman Control for Stable Flight under Unknown Disturbances

    Jun 10, 2025Ao Jin, Qiujin Liang, Tao Zhang +2Robot Trajectory TrackingRobust Control

    Research Center for Intelligent Robotics, School of Astronautics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an 710072, China · Department of Automation, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100080, China

  16. A Three-Stage Offline SDRE-Based Control Framework for Human Motion Reproduction on a Suspended Bipedal Robot

    Jun 5, 2025Ping-Kong Huang, Chien-Wu Lan, Chin-Tien Wu +1Robotic ControlRobot Trajectory Tracking

    Department of Applied Mathematics, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan · Department of Electrical Engineering, National Central University, Taoyuan City 320317, Taiwan

  17. Learning-Based Progressive Barrier Control for Robot Manipulators with Initial Errors Outside Prescribed Tracking Bounds

    Mar 18, 2025Hamed Rahimi Nohooji, Danial Zafaranchizadeh Moghaddam, Abolfazl Zaraki +1Robotic ControlRobot Trajectory Tracking

    Automation and Robotics Research Group, Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust, University of Luxembourg, 1855 Luxembourg, Luxembourg · School of Physics, Engineering and Computer Science (SPECS), and Robotics Research Group of the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, AL10 9AB, United Kingdom