Robotic Perception

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Overview

Robotic perception studies how robots use sensory data to estimate what is around them, how it is arranged, and how it may change. Approaches include neural networks and vision-language models for recognition and segmentation; SLAM, depth estimation, and 3D maps for geometry; and fusion of cameras with LiDAR, radar, tactile, or proprioceptive sensors. Active viewpoint selection and interaction help resolve occlusion and ambiguity, while scene graphs and affordance models connect perception to navigation and manipulation. A central challenge is making systems reliable outside curated benchmarks—under changing lighting, clutter, unfamiliar environments, and tight limits on latency and onboard computing—while representing uncertainty well enough for safe action.

Latest papers 304

64 papers in the last four weeks, up 191% on the four weeks before. 0.4% of all new papers.

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  1. ROI-Driven Foveated Attention for Unified Egocentric Representations in Vision-Language-Action Systems

    Mar 21, 2026Xinhai Sun, Xiang Shi, Menglin Zou +1Robotic PerceptionData-Efficient Robot Learning

    Synthoid.ai, Shanghai, China · Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

  2. An Open Source Computer Vision and Machine Learning Framework for Affordable Life Science Robotic Automation

    Mar 20, 2026Zachary Logan, Andrew Dudash, Daniel NegrónLaboratory AutomationRobotic Perception

  3. HortiMulti: A Multi-Sensor Dataset for Localisation and Mapping in Horticultural Polytunnels

    Mar 20, 2026Shuoyuan Xu, Zhipeng Zhong, Tiago Barros +4Robot LocalizationRobotic Perception

    Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering, Loughborough University, Leicestershire, UK, LE11 3TU · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Institute of Systems and Robotics, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal · Antobot Ltd, Arise Innovation Hub, Chelmsford, Essex, UK, CM1 1SQ

  4. Real-Time Structural Detection for Indoor Navigation from 3D LiDAR Using Bird's-Eye-View Images

    Mar 20, 2026Guanliang Li, Pedro Espinosa-Angulo, David Perez-Saura +1Robotic PerceptionObject Detection

    Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

  5. A Single-Fiber Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry (OFDR)-Based Shape Sensing of Concentric Tube Steerable Drilling Robots

    Mar 18, 2026Yash Kulkarni, Mobina Tavangarifard, Daniyal Maroufi +4RoboticsRobotic Perception

    Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and Texas Robotics at The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA. · M. Khadem is with the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, UK. · J. E. Bird is with the Department of Orthopedic Oncology, Division of Surgery, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA +1

  6. OGScene3D: Incremental Open-Vocabulary 3D Gaussian Scene Graph Mapping for Scene Understanding

    Mar 17, 2026Siting Zhu, Ziyun Lu, Guangming Wang +53D Scene Understanding3D SGG

    Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China · University of Cambridge, England · University of Technology Nuremberg, Germany +2

  7. Panoramic Affordance Prediction

    Mar 16, 2026Zixin Zhang, Chenfei Liao, Hongfei Zhang +10Robotic PerceptionFine-Grained Visual Perception

    HKUST(GZ) · SJTU · MBZUAI +3

  8. RealVLG-R1: A Large-Scale Real-World Visual-Language Grounding Benchmark for Robotic Perception and Manipulation

    Mar 16, 2026Linfei Li, Lin Zhang, Ying ShenVision-Language GroundingLanguage-Conditioned Robot Manipulation

    School of Computer Science and Technology, Tongji University, China

  9. CyboRacket: A Perception-to-Action Framework for Humanoid Racket Sports

    Mar 15, 2026Peng Ren, Chuan Qi, Haoyang Ge +6Vision-Based Robot ControlHumanoid Robot Control

    BUAA · BZA · USTC +3

  10. Vision-guided Autonomous Dual-arm Extraction Robot for Bell Pepper Harvesting

    Mar 14, 2026Kshitij Madhav Bhat, Tom Gao, Abhishek Mathur +4Agricultural RoboticsRobotic Perception

    Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA.

  11. Perceive What Matters: Relevance-Driven Scheduling for Multimodal Streaming Perception

    Mar 13, 2026Dingcheng Huang, Xiaotong Zhang, Kamal Youcef-ToumiRobotic PerceptionHuman-Robot Collaboration

    Mechatronics Research Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

  12. Panoramic Multimodal Semantic Occupancy Prediction for Quadruped Robots

    Mar 13, 2026Guoqiang Zhao, Zhe Yang, Sheng Wu +53D Occupancy PredictionRobotic Perception

    The authors are with the School of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hunan University, Changsha 410012, China · The author is also with the National Engineering Research Center of Robot Visual Perception and Control Technology, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China.

  13. Show, Don't Tell: Detecting Novel Objects by Watching Human Videos

    Mar 13, 2026James Akl, Jose Nicolas Avendano Arbelaez, James Barabas +16Object DetectionRobotic Perception

    Robotics and AI Institute (RAI) Cambridge, MA, USA

  14. MuxGel: Simultaneous Dual-Modal Visuo-Tactile Sensing via Spatially Multiplexing and Deep Reconstruction

    Mar 10, 2026Zhixian Hu, Zhengtong Xu, Sheeraz Athar +2Vision-Based Tactile SensingTactile Sensing for Robotic Manipulation

    Edwardson School of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA.

  15. SpaceSense-Bench: A Large-Scale Multi-Modal Benchmark for Spacecraft Perception and Pose Estimation

    Mar 10, 2026Aodi Wu, Jianhong Zuo, Zeyuan Zhao +3Robotic PerceptionSpacecraft Pose Estimation

    University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

  16. Formation-Aware Adaptive Conformalized Perception for Safe Leader-Follower Multi-Robot Systems

    Mar 9, 2026Richie R. Suganda, Bin HuRobot SafetyMulti-Robot Formation Control

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77004, USA. · Department of Engineering Technology, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77004, USA.

  17. Rethinking the semantic classification of indoor places by mobile robots

    Mar 9, 2026Oscar Martinez Mozos, Alejandra C. Hernandez, Clara Gomez +1Robotic PerceptionMobile Robotics

    Robotics Lab, DISA, Carlos III University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain

  18. SaiVLA-0: Cerebrum--Pons--Cerebellum Tripartite Architecture for Compute-Aware Vision-Language-Action

    Mar 9, 2026Xiang Shi, Wenlong Huang, Menglin Zou +1Vision-Language-Action ModelsEfficient VLA Models

  19. GSAT: Geometric Traversability Estimation using Self-supervised Learning with Anomaly Detection for Diverse Terrains

    Mar 8, 2026Dongjin Cho, Miryeong Park, Juhui Lee +2Robotic PerceptionRobot Navigation

    the Electrical and Computer Engineering and INHA Future Mobility IPCC, Inha University, Incheon, South Korea.

  20. Cable-driven Continuum Robotics: Proprioception via Proximal-integrated Force Sensing

    Mar 8, 2026Gang Zhang, Junyan Yan, Jibiao Chen +1Robotic PerceptionTactile Sensing

    Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering and T Stone Robotics Institute, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong · Curve Robotics Limited, Hong Kong · Shun Hing Institute of Advanced Engineering and Multi-Scale Medical Robotics Center, Hong Kong

  21. GuideTWSI: A Diverse Tactile Walking Surface Indicator Dataset from Synthetic and Real-World Images for Blind and Low-Vision Navigation

    Mar 7, 2026Hochul Hwang, Soowan Yang, Anh N. H. Nguyen +6Robotic PerceptionAssistive Robotics

    University of Massachusetts Amherst · Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology · The University of Texas at Austin +2

  22. MotionBits: Video Segmentation through Motion-Level Analysis of Rigid Bodies

    Mar 6, 2026Howard H. Qian, Kejia Ren, Yu Xiang +2Video Object SegmentationRobotic Perception

    Department of Computer Science Rice University · Department of Computer Science University of Texas at Dallas

  23. Safe-Night VLA: Seeing the Unseen via Thermal-Perceptive Vision-Language-Action Models for Safety-Critical Manipulation

    Mar 5, 2026Dian Yu, Qingchuan Zhou, Bingkun Huang +2Robotic ManipulationVision-Language-Action Models

    Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence (MIRMI), Technical University of Munich (TUM), 80992 Munich, Germany

  24. OmniDP: Beyond-FOV Large-Workspace Humanoid Manipulation with Omnidirectional 3D Perception

    Mar 5, 2026Pei Qu, Zheng Li, Yufei Jia +5Robotic ManipulationRobotic Perception

    1The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou). · 2Tsinghua University. · 3The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

  25. SPIRIT: Perceptive Shared Autonomy for Robust Robotic Manipulation under Deep Learning Uncertainty

    Mar 5, 2026Jongseok Lee, Ribin Balachandran, Harsimran Singh +6Robotic ManipulationRobotic Perception

    DLR · KIT · TU Munich

  26. Adaptive Policy Switching of Two-Wheeled Differential Robots for Traversing over Diverse Terrains

    Mar 5, 2026Haruki Izawa, Takeshi Takai, Shingo Kitano +2Terrain-Aware Robot LocomotionRobot Policy Adaptation

    Graduate School of Information Science, University of Hyogo, Hyogo, Japan · Takenaka Research & Development Institute, Takenaka Corporation, Chiba, Japan

  27. Design, Mapping, and Contact Anticipation with 3D-printed Whole-Body Tactile and Proximity Sensors

    Mar 5, 2026Carson Kohlbrenner, Anna Soukhovei, Caleb Escobedo +2Robotic Tactile SensingRobotic Perception

    All authors are with the Human Interaction and RObotics [HIRO] Group, University of Colorado Boulder, 1111 Engineering Drive, Boulder, CO USA.

  28. LEGS-POMDP: Language and Gesture-Guided Object Search in Partially Observable Environments

    Mar 5, 2026Ivy Xiao He, Stefanie Tellex, Jason Xinyu LiuPartially Observable Markov Decision ProcessesUncertainty-Aware Multimodal Fusion

    Brown University Providence, USA

  29. Gaussian Mixture-Based Inverse Perception Contract for Uncertainty-Aware Robot Navigation

    Mar 4, 2026Bingyao Du, Joonkyung Kim, Yiwei LyuUncertainty QuantificationRobotic Perception

    The author is with the Department of Computer Science, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027, USA. · The authors are with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.

  30. RoboLight: A Dataset with Linearly Composable Illumination for Robotic Manipulation

    Mar 4, 2026Shutong Jin, Jin Yang, Muhammad Zahid +1Robotic Data CollectionSynthetic Data Generation for Robotics

    School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, KTH Royal Institute of Technology