Terrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

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Overview

The field asks how robots can move safely and efficiently when terrain changes foothold availability, stability, and contact forces. Common approaches combine depth cameras, LiDAR, or terrain maps with proprioceptive and tactile feedback, using reinforcement learning, foothold planning, and model-predictive control to choose actions. Physics-based models of granular soil, mud, and wheel–ground interaction also help predict slip and sinkage, especially for off-road and planetary robots. A central challenge is making policies generalize from simulation and familiar surfaces to real terrain with uncertain geometry, noisy sensing, and changing contact mechanics.

Latest papers

CardsList

148 papers28 papers in the last four weeks, up 17% on the four weeks before. 0.2% of all new papers.

  1. Perceptive Behavior Foundation Model: Adapting Human Motion Priors to Robot-Centric Terrain

    Jun 6, 2026Zifan Wang, Yizhao Li, Teli Ma +5Humanoid Robot LocomotionRobot Foundation Models

    Mondo Robotics · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · Artificial General Intelligence Institute, University of Science and Technology of China +2

  2. T-GMP: Terrain-conditioned Generative Motion Priors for Versatile and Natural Humanoid Locomotion

    Jun 5, 2026Junhong Guo, Hao Hu, Chen Chen +6Humanoid Robot LocomotionAdversarial Motion Prior

    Harbin Institute of Technology · Leju Robotics

  3. Learning All-Terrain Locomotion for a Planetary Rover with Actively Articulated Suspension

    Jun 5, 2026Arthur Bouton, Tristan D. Hasseler, Michael Paton +5Planetary Rover RoboticsOff-Road Robot Navigation

    Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109 USA · Center for Autonomy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712 USA · Space Systems Laboratory, University of Maryland, MD 20742 USA

  4. TAGA: Terrain-aware Active Gaze Learning for Generalizable Agile Humanoid Locomotion

    Jun 4, 2026Peizhuo Li, Hongyi Li, Mingfeng Fan +9Active PerceptionHumanoid Robot Locomotion

    MarmotLab, National University of Singapore · Center of X-Mechanics, Zhejiang University · South China University of Technology

  5. CoRe-MoE: Contrastive Reweighted Mixture of Experts for Multi-Terrain Humanoid Locomotion with Gait Adaptation

    Jun 3, 2026Kailun Huang, Zikang Xie, Yanzhe Xie +8Humanoid Robot LocomotionMixture of Experts

    Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · Guangdong University of Technology +3

  6. Global-Local Attention Decomposition for Terrain Encoding in Humanoid Perceptive Locomotion

    May 30, 2026Shengcheng Fu, Yang Zhang, Zhanxiang Cao +4Legged RoboticsHumanoid Robot Locomotion

    Tongji University, Shanghai, China · Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China · Shanghai Innovation Institute, Shanghai, China +1

  7. Learning Terrain-Aware Whole-Body Control for Perceptive Legged Loco-Manipulation

    May 29, 2026Sikai Guo, Yudong Zhong, Guoyang Zhao +3Legged RoboticsTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    Robotics and Autonomous Systems Thrust, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou 511453, China

  8. SSR: Scaling Surefooted and Symmetric Humanoid Traversal to the Open World

    May 29, 2026Ruiqi Yu, Yiwen Wang, Yuan Hao +2Humanoid Robot LocomotionTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    Zhejiang University

  9. Learning, locomotion, and navigation of soft synthetic snakes in three-dimensional, heterogeneous environments

    May 24, 2026Xiaotian Zhang, Ali Albazroun, Tixian Wang +3RL for RoboticsRobotics Simulation

    Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign · Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign

  10. Terrain Consistent Reference-Guided RL for Humanoid Navigation Autonomy

    May 15, 2026William D. Compton, Zachary Olkin, Aaron D. AmesHumanoid Robot LocomotionReinforcement Learning

    Department of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125

  11. Neuromorphic Reinforcement Learning for Quadruped Locomotion Control on Uneven Terrain

    May 10, 2026Zhuangyu Han, Abhronil SenguptaEquilibrium PropagationTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Penn State University University Park, PA 16802

  12. Task-Conditioned Uncertainty Costmaps for Legged Locomotion

    Apr 30, 2026Kartikeya Singh, Christo Aluckal, Romeo Orsolino +1Robot LocomotionEpistemic Uncertainty

    DRONES Lab, University at Buffalo, NY, USA · Ocado Technology, UK

  13. Learning Whole-Body Humanoid Locomotion via Motion Generation and Motion Tracking

    Apr 19, 2026Zewei Zhang, Kehan Wen, Michael Xu +7Robot Trajectory TrackingHumanoid Robot Locomotion

    Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich · EPFL · Simon Fraser University +2

  14. CART: Context-Aware Terrain Adaptation using Temporal Sequence Selection for Legged Robots

    Apr 15, 2026Kartikeya Singh, Youngjin Kim, Yash Turkar +1Terrain-Aware Robot LocomotionRobot Locomotion

    DRONES LAB, University at Buffalo, NY, USA

  15. A Foot Resistive Force Model for Legged Locomotion on Muddy Terrains

    Apr 13, 2026Xunjie Chen, Liuyin Wang, Xinyan Huang +3Robot LocomotionTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA · Department of Electrical and Biomedical Engineering, University of Nevada, Reno, NV 89557 USA

  16. Bipedal-Walking-Dynamics Model on Granular Terrains

    Apr 13, 2026Xunjie Chen, Xinyan Huang, Peter Shan +2Granular Terrain LocomotionTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA · Bridgewater Raritan High School, Bridgewater, NJ 08807 USA · State Key Lab of Fluid Power Transmission and Control and the School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China

  17. LatentMimic: Terrain-Adaptive Locomotion via Latent Space Imitation

    Apr 7, 2026Zhiquan Wang, Yunyu Liu, Dipam Patel +3Terrain-Aware Robot LocomotionQuadruped Locomotion

    Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, USA

  18. RK-MPC: Residual Koopman Model Predictive Control for Quadruped Locomotion in Offroad Environments

    Apr 5, 2026Sriram S. K. S. Narayanan, Umesh VaidyaModel Predictive ControlQuadruped Locomotion

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29630, USA

  19. Learning Locomotion on Complex Terrain for Quadrupedal Robots with Foot Position Maps and Stability Rewards

    Apr 3, 2026Matthew Hwang, Yubin Liu, Ryo Hakoda +1Quadruped LocomotionTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    University of Tokyo, Japan

  20. From Impact to Insight: Dynamics-Aware Proprioceptive Terrain Sensing on Granular Media

    Apr 2, 2026Yifeng Zhang, Yue Wu, Jake Futterman +5Terrain-Aware Robot LocomotionGranular Terrain Locomotion

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA

  21. CReF: Cross-modal and Recurrent Fusion for Depth-conditioned Humanoid Locomotion

    Mar 31, 2026Yuan Hao, Ruiqi Yu, Shixin Luo +3Humanoid Robot LocomotionRobot Locomotion

    The authors are with Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China. · Guoteng Zhang is with the School of Control Science and Engineering, Shandong University, Jinan 250061, China.

  22. Koopman Operator Framework for Modeling and Control of Off-Road Vehicle on Deformable Terrain

    Mar 30, 2026Kartik Loya, Phanindra TallapragadaTerrain-Aware Robot LocomotionVehicle Dynamics

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29607 USA

  23. TerraSkipper: A Centimeter-Scale Robot for Multi-Terrain Skipping and Crawling

    Mar 29, 2026Shashwat Singh, Sheri Zhang, Spencer Matonis +1Robot LocomotionTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    The Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. · Edulis Therapeutics, Nashville, TN 37204.

  24. Legged Autonomous Surface Science In Analogue Environments (LASSIE): Making Every Robotic Step Count in Planetary Exploration

    Mar 20, 2026Cristina G. Wilson, Marion Nachon, Shipeng Liu +20Planetary Rover RoboticsRobotic Data Collection

    Collaborative Robotics and Intelligent Systems Institute, Oregon State University, Corvallis, 97331, USA · Department of Geology and Geophysics, Texas A&M University, College Station, 77843, USA · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, 90089, USA +7

  25. PRIOR: Perceptive Learning for Humanoid Locomotion with Reference Gait Priors

    Mar 19, 2026Chenxi Han, Shilu He, Yi Cheng +2Humanoid Robot LocomotionRobot Locomotion

    Tsinghua University · ZERITH Robotics · Shanghai University

  26. REAL: Robust Extreme Agility via Spatio-Temporal Policy Learning and Physics-Guided Filtering

    Mar 18, 2026Jialong Liu, Dehan Shen, Yanbo Wen +2Robot Policy LearningRobot Locomotion

    PEAK-Lab, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Guangzhou, 511453, China.

  27. Learning Whole-Body Control for a Salamander Robot

    Mar 17, 2026Mengze Tian, Qiyuan Fu, Chuanfang Ning +2Robot LocomotionWhole-Body Control

    Biorobotics Laboratory (BIOROB), École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne 1015, Switzerland

  28. A Pin-Array Structured Climbing Robot for Stable Locomotion on Steep Rocky Terrain

    Mar 17, 2026Keita Nagaoka, Kentaro Uno, Kazuya YoshidaRobot LocomotionRobotic Grasping

    The authors are with the Space Robotics Lab. (SRL) in Department of Aerospace Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8579, Japan.

  29. ADAPT: Adaptive Dual-projection Architecture for Perceptive Traversal

    Mar 17, 2026Shuo Shao, Tianchen Huang, Wei Gao +1Humanoid Robot LocomotionTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    Department of Automation, University of Science and Technology of China, Anhui 230026, China. · Institute of Humanoid Robots, Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, Anhui 230026, China.

  30. KiRAS: Keyframe Guided Self-Imitation for Robust and Adaptive Skill Learning in Quadruped Robots

    Mar 16, 2026Xiaoyi Wei, Peng Zhai, Jiaxin Tu +5Robot Skill LearningQuadruped Locomotion

    College of Intelligent Robotics and Advanced Manufacturing, Fudan University, China. · Power China Huadong Engineering Corporation Limited, China.