Terrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

Ask about this topic

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. VIP-Loco: A Visually Guided Infinite Horizon Planning Framework for Legged Locomotion

    Mar 15, 2026Aditya Shirwatkar, Satyam Gupta, Shishir KolathayaTerrain-Aware Robot LocomotionVision-Based Robot Control

    Robert Bosch Center for Cyber-Physical Systems, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. · Robert Bosch Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and the Department of Computer Science & Automation, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru.

  2. TransCurriculum: Multi-Dimensional Curriculum Learning for Fast & Stable Locomotion

    Mar 14, 2026Prakhar Mishra, Amir Hossain Raj, Xuesu Xiao +1RL for Legged LocomotionCurriculum Learning

    University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA. · George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA.

  3. Learning Energy-Efficient Air--Ground Actuation for Hybrid Robots on Stair-Like Terrain

    Mar 13, 2026Jiaxing Li, Ishaan Bhimwal, Wen Tian +5Robot LocomotionEnergy-Efficient Robot Locomotion

    Carnegie Mellon University, US · Technische Hochschule Würzburg-Schweinfurt, Germany · Nanyang Technological University, Singapore +1

  4. Energy Prediction on Sloping Ground for Quadruped Robots

    Mar 12, 2026Mohamed Ounally, Cyrille Pierre, Johann LaconteEnergy-Efficient Robot LocomotionQuadruped Locomotion

    Université Clermont Auvergne, INRAE, UR TSCF, 63000, Clermont-Ferrand, France

  5. 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

  6. Walking on Rough Terrain with Any Number of Legs

    Mar 10, 2026Zhuoyang Chen, Xinyuan Wang, Shai RevzenLegged RoboticsRobot Locomotion

    The authors are with the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.

  7. Proprioceptive Safe Active Navigation and Exploration for Planetary Environments

    Mar 9, 2026Matthew Y. Jiang, Feifei Qian, Shipeng LiuPlanetary Rover RoboticsAutonomous Robot Exploration

    Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA · University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA

  8. Dual-Horizon Hybrid Internal Model for Low-Gravity Quadrupedal Jumping with Hardware-in-the-Loop Validation

    Mar 9, 2026Haozhe Xu, Yifei Zhao, Wenhao Feng +6Robot LocomotionQuadruped Locomotion

  9. Omnidirectional Humanoid Locomotion on Stairs via Unsafe Stepping Penalty and Sparse LiDAR Elevation Mapping

    Mar 9, 2026Yuzhi Jiang, Yujun Liang, Junhao Li +2Humanoid Robot LocomotionTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    School of Artificial Intelligence and Automation, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China. · State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China. · School of Mechanical Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China.

  10. Inverse Resistive Force Theory (I-RFT): Learning granular properties through robot-terrain physical interactions

    Mar 8, 2026Shipeng Liu, Feng Xue, Yifeng Zhang +2Terrain-Aware Robot LocomotionGranular Terrain Locomotion

    University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA

  11. GeoLoco: Leveraging 3D Geometric Priors from Visual Foundation Model for Robust RGB-Only Humanoid Locomotion

    Mar 8, 2026Yufei Liu, Xieyuanli Chen, Hainan Pan +5Humanoid Robot LocomotionVision-Based Robot Control

    College of Intelligence Science and Technology, National University of Defense Technology, China

  12. Perceptive Variable-Timing Footstep Planning for Humanoid Locomotion on Disconnected Footholds

    Mar 8, 2026Zhaoyang Xiang, Upama Pant, Ayonga HereidHumanoid Robot LocomotionTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210, USA.

  13. Failure Mechanisms and Risk Estimation for Legged Robot Locomotion on Granular Slopes

    Mar 6, 2026Xingjue Liao, Feifei QianGranular Terrain LocomotionRobot Locomotion

  14. VertiAdaptor: Online Kinodynamics Adaptation for Vertically Challenging Terrain

    Mar 6, 2026Tong Xu, Chenhui Pan, Aniket Datar +1Dynamical SystemsOnline System Identification

    Department of Computer Science, George Mason University

  15. Improved hopping control on slopes for small robots using spring mass modeling

    Mar 6, 2026Heston Roberts, Pronoy Sarker, Sm Ashikul Islam +1Robot LocomotionRobotic Control

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, USA

  16. Terrain characterization and locomotion adaptation in a small-scale lizard-inspired robot

    Mar 6, 2026Duncan Andrews, Landon Zimmerman, Evan Martin +2Bioinspired RoboticsRobotics

    Locomotion in Biology and Robotics (LiBR) Lab at Penn State University, University Park, PA 16802

  17. Task-Level Decisions to Gait Level Control: A Hierarchical Policy Approach for Quadruped Navigation

    Mar 6, 2026Sijia Li, Haoyu Wang, Shenghai Yuan +2Quadruped Robot NavigationRobot Navigation

  18. 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

  19. Look Forward to Walk Backward: Efficient Terrain Memory for Backward Locomotion with Forward Vision

    Mar 3, 2026Shixin Luo, Songbo Li, Yuan Hao +4Robot LocomotionLegged Robotics

    The authors are with Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control, Zhejiang University, 310027, China. · The author is with College of Artificial Intelligence, Nankai University, 300350, China. · The author is with Hangzhou Public Library, 310016, China.

  20. CMoE: Contrastive Mixture of Experts for Motion Control and Terrain Adaptation of Humanoid Robots

    Mar 3, 2026Shihao Ma, Hongjin Chen, Zijun Xu +6Humanoid Robot LocomotionTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    College of Intelligent Robotics and Advanced Manufacturing, Fudan University, Shanghai, China, 200433

  21. Scout-Rover cooperation: online terrain strength mapping and traversal risk estimation for planetary-analog explorations

    Feb 21, 2026Shipeng Liu, J. Diego Caporale, Yifeng Zhang +17Planetary Rover RoboticsSpace Robotics

    University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. · University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA. · NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, USA. +2

  22. Soft Surfaced Vision-Based Tactile Sensing for Bipedal Robot Applications

    Feb 20, 2026Jaeeun Kim, Junhee Lim, Yu SheRobotic Tactile SensingVision-Based Tactile Sensing

    Department of Industrial Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA · Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47906, USA

  23. MeshMimic: Geometry-Aware Humanoid Motion Learning through 3D Scene Reconstruction

    Feb 17, 2026Qiang Zhang, Jiahao Ma, Peiran Liu +20Terrain-Aware Robot LocomotionRobot Imitation Learning

    X-Humanoid · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · The Australian National University +4

  24. TRAIN: Terrain-Aware Interactive Navigation for Quadruped Robots via Reinforcement Learning

    Feb 13, 2026Wei Zhu, Irfan Tito Kurniawan, Ye Zhao +1Quadruped Robot NavigationTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    Department of Robotics, Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, 980-8579, Sendai, Japan. · Laboratory for Intelligent Decision and Autonomous Robots, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30313, USA.

  25. TTT-Parkour: Rapid Test-Time Training for Perceptive Robot Parkour

    Feb 2, 2026Shaoting Zhu, Baijun Ye, Jiaxuan Wang +5Robot LocomotionHumanoid Robot Locomotion

    Tsinghua University · Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute · Princeton University

  26. PUMA: Perception-driven Unified Foothold Prior for Mobility Augmented Quadruped Parkour

    Jan 22, 2026Liang Wang, Kanzhong Yao, Yang Liu +4Legged RoboticsTerrain-Aware Robot Locomotion

    Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control, Zhejiang University, 310027, China · Institute of Artificial Intelligence (TeleAI), China Telecom.

  27. Agile and Generalized Legged Locomotion via Attention-Based Neural Map Encoding

    Jan 13, 2026Chong Zhang, Victor Klemm, Fan Yang +1Terrain-Aware Robot LocomotionRL for Legged Locomotion

    1Robotic Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, Switzerland · 2Secure, Reliable, and Intelligent Systems Lab, ETH Zurich, Switzerland · 3ETH AI Center, Switzerland

  28. Hiking in the Wild: A Scalable Perceptive Parkour Framework for Humanoids

    Jan 12, 2026Shaoting Zhu, Ziwen Zhuang, Mengjie Zhao +2Humanoid Robot LocomotionRobot Locomotion

    IIIS, Tsinghua University · Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute · Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University