Terrain
Related papers: 20
About
Terrain refers to the physical surface and environmental conditions that a robot must perceive, navigate, or physically interact with during operation. In robotics, terrain encompasses everything from flat indoor floors to rough outdoor landscapes, slopes, obstacles, vegetation, and planetary surfaces. Robots must analyze terrain to plan safe paths, adapt their locomotion strategies, and avoid hazards. Legged robots like quadrupeds and hexapods actively respond to uneven terrain by adjusting gait patterns, foot placement, and body posture, while wheeled or tracked robots rely on terrain classification and obstacle avoidance algorithms. Aerial robots must account for terrain when perching or navigating close to surfaces. Techniques including LiDAR-based classification, stereo vision, sensor fusion, and reinforcement learning enable robots to autonomously characterize and respond to terrain conditions in real time. Terrain handling is fundamental to expanding robot autonomy beyond controlled environments into challenging real-world settings such as disaster zones, wilderness search-and-rescue missions, construction sites, and planetary exploration, where reliable mobility directly determines mission success.
Top Researchers
Top Institutes
Top Cited Papers
Small-scale soft-bodied robot with multimodal locomotion
Wenqi Hu, Guo Zhan Lum, Massimo Mastrangeli, Metin Sitti
Citations: 2305 • 2018
BigDog, the Rough-Terrain Quadruped Robot
Marc H. Raibert, Kevin Blankespoor, Gabriel M. Nelson, Rob Playter
Citations: 1477 • 2008
RHex: A Simple and Highly Mobile Hexapod Robot
Uluc̣ Saranlı, M. Buehler, Daniel E. Koditschek
Citations: 1312 • 2001
Modeling and control of formations of nonholonomic mobile robots
Jaydev P. Desai, J.P. Ostrowski, Vijay Kumar
Citations: 1155 • 2001
Learning quadrupedal locomotion over challenging terrain
Citations: 1024 • 2020
Sensor Fusion in Certainty Grids for Mobile Robots
Hans Moravec
Citations: 968 • 1989
Optimal and efficient path planning for partially-known environments
Anthony Stentz
Citations: 886 • 2002
A review: On path planning strategies for navigation of mobile robot
B. K. Patle, Ganesh Babu L, Anish Pandey, Dayal R. Parhi, A. Jagadeesh
Citations: 884 • 2019
Planning walking patterns for a biped robot
Qiang Huang, Kazuhito Yokoi, Shuuji Kajita, Kenji Kaneko, Hirohiko Arai, Noriho Koyachi, K. Tanie
Citations: 852 • 2001
Optimization-based locomotion planning, estimation, and control design for the atlas humanoid robot
Scott Kuindersma, Robin Deits, Maurice Fallon, Andrés Valenzuela, Hongkai Dai, Frank Permenter, Twan Koolen, Pat Marion, Russ Tedrake
Citations: 814 • 2015
Learning robust perceptive locomotion for quadrupedal robots in the wild
Takahiro Miki, Joonho Lee, Jemin Hwangbo, Lorenz Wellhausen, Vladlen Koltun, Marco Hutter
Citations: 729 • 2022
Fast replanning for navigation in unknown terrain
Sven Koenig, Maxim Likhachev
Citations: 679 • 2005
Two years of Visual Odometry on the Mars Exploration Rovers
Mark Maimone, Yang Cheng, Larry Matthies
Citations: 642 • 2007
Design of HyQ – a hydraulically and electrically actuated quadruped robot
Claudio Semini, Nikos G. Tsagarakis, E. Guglielmino, Michele Focchi, Ferdinando Cannella, Darwin G. Caldwell
Citations: 627 • 2011
Adaptive Dynamic Walking of a Quadruped Robot on Irregular Terrain Based on Biological Concepts
Yasuhiro Fukuoka, Hiroshi Kimura, Avis H. Cohen
Citations: 626 • 2003
Running in the real world: adjusting leg stiffness for different surfaces
Daniel P. Ferris, Micky Louie, Claire T. Farley
Citations: 588 • 1998
Virtual Model Control: An Intuitive Approach for Bipedal Locomotion
Jerry Pratt, Chee–Meng Chew, Ann L. Torres, P. Dilworth, Gill A. Pratt
Citations: 550 • 2001
A Robot that Walks; Emergent Behaviors from a Carefully Evolved Network
Rodney A. Brooks
Citations: 549 • 1989
Adaptive Dynamic Walking of a Quadruped Robot on Natural Ground Based on Biological Concepts
Hiroshi Kimura, Yasuhiro Fukuoka, Avis H. Cohen
Citations: 478 • 2007
Forces Acting on a Biped Robot. Center of Pressure—Zero Moment Point
P. Sardain, Guy Bessonnet
Citations: 461 • 2004