Navigation

For humanoids, navigation is more than path planning. It requires continuous awareness of obstacles, terrain, and intent. Unlike wheeled robots, bipeds must adjust foot placement and balance in real time while moving through unpredictable environments.

Modern systems combine Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) — which builds a map while tracking the robot’s position — with terrain-aware planning and depth sensing. Some robots now build semantic maps on the fly, recognizing objects like chairs, doors, or charging stations using vision-language models. Emerging methods fuse transformer-based perception with motion planning, allowing robots to interpret open-ended commands like “go stand by the door” and respond with grounded, adaptive behavior.