A curated list of resources on loco-manipulation — the joint problem of locomotion and manipulation for legged, humanoid, wheeled-legged, and mobile robots.
This list is organized by methodology (model-based control & planning → learning-based control → foundation models & high-level reasoning), with thematic sub-sections inside each. Entries are tagged by robot embodiment and annotated with the research group / institution. Contributions welcome — see Contributing.
📖 Two surveys anchor this taxonomy: Humanoid Locomotion and Manipulation (2501.02116, pipeline view) and A Survey of Behavior Foundation Models (2506.20487, foundation-model view).
Embodiment tags: 🧍 Humanoid · 🐾 Quadruped (+arm/leg) · 🛞 Wheeled-legged · 🚗 Mobile manipulator · 🦿 General legged
Other: ⭐ = seminal / highly-cited · 🏛️ research group in italics
A few major threads run through the field — useful for tracing how ideas evolved:
| Group | Focus | Representative lineage |
|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA GEAR / NVLabs | Humanoid WBC + foundation models | HOVER → ASAP → SONIC → GR00T N1/N1.5; ProtoMotions, MaskedMimic |
| CMU LeCAR Lab (Guanya Shi) | Whole-body RL, sim-to-real | H2O → OmniH2O → WoCoCo → FALCON → ASAP → BFM-Zero |
| UC San Diego (Xiaolong Wang) | Expressive & visual loco-manip | ExBody → ExBody2 → GMT; VBC, WildLMa, Mobile-TeleVision |
| Stanford (C. Karen Liu, Chelsea Finn, Fei-Fei Li) | Teleop, data, imitation | Mobile ALOHA, HumanPlus, TWIST, DexCap, VisualMimic, VoxPoser |
| Amazon FAR (Abbeel, Duan) | Humanoid data & teleop at scale | TWIST2, OmniRetarget |
| ETH Zurich RSL/CRL (Marco Hutter) | Model-based WB-MPC, multi-contact | ALMA → Unified MPC → Science Robotics multi-contact; wheeled-legged line |
| USC DRCL (Quan Nguyen) | Model-based humanoid loco-manip | HECTOR, hierarchical opt. for heavy objects |
| MIT (Biomimetics; Improbable AI) | WB-MPC; learned force control | Fast WB-MPC; Learning Force Control; SoftMimic |
| Meta FAIR | Behavioral foundation models | FB representation → Meta Motivo → BFM-Zero |
| Shanghai AI Lab / OpenRobotLab | Humanoid systems & control | HOMIE, UniTracker, RoboDuet, BFM for Humanoids |
| Physical Intelligence | Generalist VLA | π₀ → π₀.₅ |
💡 Note on "GRILITE": there is no NVIDIA model by that name — it most likely refers to GR00T (NVIDIA's humanoid VLA), possibly conflated with the Fourier GR-1 humanoid that GR00T is demonstrated on.
| Name | Robot Base | Arm | Formats | License | Meshes | Inertias | Collisions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Go2-Arx | Go2 | Arx-L5-Pro | URDF | BSD-3-Clause | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| B1-Z1 | Unitree B1 | Unitree Z1 | URDF | BSD-3-Clause | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Aliengo-Z1 | Unitree Aliengo | Unitree Z1 | URDF | BSD-3-Clause | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Name | Robot Base | Arm | Formats | License | Meshes | Inertias | Collisions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airbot | Airbot | Airbot Arm | URDF | - | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Name | Robot Base | Arm | Formats | License | Meshes | Inertias | Collisions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PR2 | PR2 robot | PR2 robot | URDF | BSD-3 | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Ridgeback-UR5 | ClearPath Ridgeback base | UR-5 | URDF | Apache 2.0 | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Mabi-Mobile | - | - | URDF | - | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
If you find any interesting papers or resources related to loco-manipulation, feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request!
- **[Year Venue]** Title [[paper](url)] [[project](url)] [[code](url)] <embodiment emoji> *Group/Institution*Last updated: June 2026 — all arXiv IDs verified to resolve; project/code links HTTP-checked.
A curated list of resources on loco-manipulation — the joint problem of locomotion and manipulation for legged, humanoid, wheeled-legged, and mobile robots.
This list is organized by methodology (model-based control & planning → learning-based control → foundation models & high-level reasoning), with thematic sub-sections inside each. Entries are tagged by robot embodiment and annotated with the research group / institution. Contributions welcome — see Contributing.
📖 Two surveys anchor this taxonomy: Humanoid Locomotion and Manipulation (2501.02116, pipeline view) and A Survey of Behavior Foundation Models (2506.20487, foundation-model view).
Embodiment tags: 🧍 Humanoid · 🐾 Quadruped (+arm/leg) · 🛞 Wheeled-legged · 🚗 Mobile manipulator · 🦿 General legged
Other: ⭐ = seminal / highly-cited · 🏛️ research group in italics
A few major threads run through the field — useful for tracing how ideas evolved:
| Group | Focus | Representative lineage |
|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA GEAR / NVLabs | Humanoid WBC + foundation models | HOVER → ASAP → SONIC → GR00T N1/N1.5; ProtoMotions, MaskedMimic |
| CMU LeCAR Lab (Guanya Shi) | Whole-body RL, sim-to-real | H2O → OmniH2O → WoCoCo → FALCON → ASAP → BFM-Zero |
| UC San Diego (Xiaolong Wang) | Expressive & visual loco-manip | ExBody → ExBody2 → GMT; VBC, WildLMa, Mobile-TeleVision |
| Stanford (C. Karen Liu, Chelsea Finn, Fei-Fei Li) | Teleop, data, imitation | Mobile ALOHA, HumanPlus, TWIST, DexCap, VisualMimic, VoxPoser |
| Amazon FAR (Abbeel, Duan) | Humanoid data & teleop at scale | TWIST2, OmniRetarget |
| ETH Zurich RSL/CRL (Marco Hutter) | Model-based WB-MPC, multi-contact | ALMA → Unified MPC → Science Robotics multi-contact; wheeled-legged line |
| USC DRCL (Quan Nguyen) | Model-based humanoid loco-manip | HECTOR, hierarchical opt. for heavy objects |
| MIT (Biomimetics; Improbable AI) | WB-MPC; learned force control | Fast WB-MPC; Learning Force Control; SoftMimic |
| Meta FAIR | Behavioral foundation models | FB representation → Meta Motivo → BFM-Zero |
| Shanghai AI Lab / OpenRobotLab | Humanoid systems & control | HOMIE, UniTracker, RoboDuet, BFM for Humanoids |
| Physical Intelligence | Generalist VLA | π₀ → π₀.₅ |
💡 Note on "GRILITE": there is no NVIDIA model by that name — it most likely refers to GR00T (NVIDIA's humanoid VLA), possibly conflated with the Fourier GR-1 humanoid that GR00T is demonstrated on.
| Name | Robot Base | Arm | Formats | License | Meshes | Inertias | Collisions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Go2-Arx | Go2 | Arx-L5-Pro | URDF | BSD-3-Clause | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| B1-Z1 | Unitree B1 | Unitree Z1 | URDF | BSD-3-Clause | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Aliengo-Z1 | Unitree Aliengo | Unitree Z1 | URDF | BSD-3-Clause | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Name | Robot Base | Arm | Formats | License | Meshes | Inertias | Collisions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airbot | Airbot | Airbot Arm | URDF | - | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Name | Robot Base | Arm | Formats | License | Meshes | Inertias | Collisions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PR2 | PR2 robot | PR2 robot | URDF | BSD-3 | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Ridgeback-UR5 | ClearPath Ridgeback base | UR-5 | URDF | Apache 2.0 | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
| Mabi-Mobile | - | - | URDF | - | ✔️ | ✔️ | ✔️ |
If you find any interesting papers or resources related to loco-manipulation, feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request!
- **[Year Venue]** Title [[paper](url)] [[project](url)] [[code](url)] <embodiment emoji> *Group/Institution*Last updated: June 2026 — all arXiv IDs verified to resolve; project/code links HTTP-checked.