# Humanoid Locomotion and Manipulation: Current Progress and Challenges in Control, Planning, and Learning

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.02116 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.02116/

## Key facts

- Cited by 61 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 3 Jan 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 61)

- [HOMIE: Humanoid Loco-Manipulation with Isomorphic Exoskeleton Cockpit](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13013/) (2025)
- [Vision-Language-Action (VLA) Models: Concepts, Progress, Applications and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04769/) (2025)
- [InterMimic: Towards Universal Whole-Body Control for Physics-Based Human-Object Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20390/) (2025)
- [KungfuBot: Physics-Based Humanoid Whole-Body Control for Learning Highly-Dynamic Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12851/) (2025)
- [Learning Getting-Up Policies for Real-World Humanoid Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.12152/) (2025)
- [Being-0: A Humanoid Robotic Agent with Vision-Language Models and Modular Skills](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12533/) (2025)
- [PhysHSI: Towards a Real-World Generalizable and Natural Humanoid-Scene Interaction System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.11072/) (2025)
- [DreamControl: Human-Inspired Whole-Body Humanoid Control for Scene Interaction via Guided Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.14353/) (2025)
- [HumanoidGen: Data Generation for Bimanual Dexterous Manipulation via LLM Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.00833/) (2025)
- [ZEST: Zero-shot Embodied Skill Transfer for Athletic Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.00401/) (2026)
- [Neural Brain: A Neuroscience-inspired Framework for Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07634/) (2025)
- [FRoM-W1: Towards General Humanoid Whole-Body Control with Language Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12799/) (2026)
- [AMOR: Adaptive Character Control through Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23708/) (2025)
- [Toward Embodied AGI: A Review of Embodied AI and the Road Ahead](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.14235/) (2025)
- [Learning Human-Humanoid Coordination for Collaborative Object Carrying](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.14293/) (2025)
- [M4Human: A Large-Scale Multimodal mmWave Radar Benchmark for Human Mesh Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12378/) (2025)
- [DreamPolicy: A Unified World-model Policy for Scalable Humanoid Locomotion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18780/) (2025)
- [Humanoid Occupancy: Enabling A Generalized Multimodal Occupancy Perception System on Humanoid Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20217/) (2025)
- [TeamHOI: Learning a Unified Policy for Cooperative Human-Object Interactions with Any Team Size](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07988/) (2026)
- [SteadyTray: Learning Object Balancing Tasks in Humanoid Tray Transport via Residual Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.10306/) (2026)
- [FlashSAC: Fast and Stable Off-Policy Reinforcement Learning for High-Dimensional Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.04539/) (2026)
- [Space Robotics Bench: Robot Learning Beyond Earth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23328/) (2025)
- [Coordinated Humanoid Manipulation with Choice Policies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.25072/) (2025)
- [CLOT: Closed-Loop Global Motion Tracking for Whole-Body Humanoid Teleoperation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15060/) (2026)
- [HumanoidMimicGen: Data Generation for Loco-Manipulation via Whole-Body Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27724/) (2026)
- [Latent Conditioned Loco-Manipulation Using Motion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16061/) (2025)
- [FALCON: Actively Decoupled Visuomotor Policies for Loco-Manipulation with Foundation-Model-Based Coordination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.04381/) (2025)
- [From Knowing to Doing Precisely: A General Self-Correction and Termination Framework for VLA models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01811/) (2026)
- [Accelerating and Scaling MPC-Guided Reinforcement Learning for Humanoid Locomotion and Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.05687/) (2026)
- [PAC-MAN: Perception-Aware CBF-RL for Whole-Body Safety in Humanoid Dodgeball](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28623/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Humanoid robots hold great potential to perform various human-level skills, involving unified locomotion and manipulation in real-world settings. Driven by advances in machine learning and the strength of existing model-based approaches, these capabilities have progressed rapidly, but often separately. This survey offers a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art in humanoid locomotion and manipulation (HLM), with a focus on control, planning, and learning methods. We first review the model-based methods that have been the backbone of humanoid robotics for the past three decades. We discuss contact planning, motion planning, and whole-body control, highlighting the trade-offs between model fidelity and computational efficiency. Then the focus is shifted to examine emerging learning-based methods, with an emphasis on reinforcement and imitation learning that enhance the robustness and versatility of loco-manipulation skills. Furthermore, we assess the potential of integrating foundation models with humanoid embodiments to enable the development of generalist humanoid agents. This survey also highlights the emerging role of tactile sensing, particularly whole-body tactile feedback, as a crucial modality for handling contact-rich interactions. Finally, we compare the strengths and limitations of model-based and learning-based paradigms from multiple perspectives, such as robustness, computational efficiency, versatility, and generalizability, and suggest potential solutions to existing challenges.