Awesome Robot Social Navigation 🤖🚶

By Shuijing Liu

This repo keeps track of the historical and recent advances in robot social navigation/crowd navigation/navigation in dynamic or human environments.

• I'm actively developing this list, if I missed your favorite work or make any error, please open a pull request!
• For viewers' convenience, the links of papers first prioritize their websites, and then the free preprints if they are publicly available.
• Some papers belong to more than one category, I only link them on their first appearance.

Feel Free to ⭐️ this repo for future updates 📲

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Table of Content

• Surveys
• Datasets and Benchmarks
  • Real-world Datasets
  • Simulated Datasets and Benchmarks
• Methods
  • Model-based Methods
  • Learning-based Methods
    • Supervised Learning
    • Reinforcement Learning
  • Hybrid Approaches
  • Foundation Models for Social Navigation
  • Explainability and Trust
• Environment Models
• User Studies
• Recent Workshops

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Surveys

• Human-aware robot navigation: A survey, Robotics and Autonomous Systems 2013.
• Algorithms for Collision-Free Navigation of Mobile Robots in Complex Cluttered Environments: A Survey, Robotica 2015.
• Core Challenges of Social Robot Navigation: A Survey, THRI 2023.
• A Survey on Socially Aware Robot Navigation: Taxonomy and Future Challenges, IJRR 2024.
• Conflict Avoidance in Social Navigation—a Survey, THRI 2024.
• Bridging Requirements, Planning, and Evaluation: A Review of Social Robot Navigation, Sensors 2024.
• Characterizing the Complexity of Social Robot Navigation Scenarios, arXiv 2024.
• Principles and guidelines for evaluating social robot navigation algorithms, THRI 2025.

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Datasets and Benchmarks

Note that lots of datasets or benchmarks are proposed as a part of individual papers. Here I did not include them, and only list works that solely focus on datasets or benchmarks.

Real-world Datasets

• Experimental Analysis of Sample-Based Maps for Long-Term SLAM, IJRR 2009.
• Long-term experiments with an adaptive spherical view representation for navigation in changing environments, Robotics and Automation Systems 2011.
• Tracking People in 3D Using a Bottom-Up Top-Down Detector, ICRA 2011.
• Localization and navigation of the CoBots over long-term deployments, IJRR 2013.
• (NCLT) University of Michigan North Campus Long-Term Vision and Lidar Dataset, IJRR 2010.
• (L-CAS) Online Learning for Human Classification in 3D LiDAR-based Tracking, IROS 2017.
• (JDRB) JackRabbot Dataset and Benchmark, paper series 2021-2023.
• SocNavBench: A Grounded Simulation Testing Framework for Evaluating Social Navigation, THRI 2022.
• THOR and THOR-Magni, RA-L 2020 and arXiv 2022.
• (SCAND) Socially CompliAnt Navigation Dataset, RA-L 2022.
• (MuSoHu) Toward Human-Like Social Robot Navigation: A Large-Scale, Multi-Modal, Social Human Navigation Dataset, IROS 2023.
• TBD Pedestrian Dataset, ICRA 2024.
• Semantic2D: A Semantic Dataset for 2D Lidar Semantic Segmentation, arXiv 2024.

Simulators & Simulated Datasets

Review: A Review of Software for Crowd Simulation.

• 2D simulators
  • CrowdNav
    • Extension with static obstacles, SFM human agents, and Stable Baselines 3 support: CrowdSimPlus.
  • SocNav1: A Dataset to Benchmark and Learn Social Navigation Conventions, MDPI 2019.
  • SocNav2
  • SocNavBench: A Grounded Simulation Testing Framework for Evaluating Social Navigation, THRI 2022.
  • ir-sim: A python based light weight robot simulator for the algorithm development of robotics navigation, control, and learning.
• 3D simulators
  • Pedsim-ROS
  • AI Habitat 3.0
  • iGibson
  • gym_ped_sim
  • Social Environment for Autonomous Navigation (SEAN) 2.0
  • HuNavSim: A ROS 2 Human Navigation Simulator for Benchmarking Human-Aware Robot Navigation, RAL 2023.
  • Arena-Rosnav 3.0: A Comprehensive Development and Benchmarking Platform for Navigation, RSS 2024.
  • Arena 4.0: A Comprehensive ROS2 Development and Benchmarking Platform for Human-centric Navigation Using Generative-Model-based Environment Generation, ICRA 2025.

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Methods

Model-based Methods

Velocity obstacle approaches (RVO, ORCA, etc)

• Motion Planning in Dynamic Environments using Velocity Obstacles, IJRR 1998.
• Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles for Real-Time Multi-Agent Navigation, ICRA 2008.
• Generalized Velocity Obstacles, IROS 2009.
• Optimal Reciprocal Collision Avoidance for Multi-Agent Navigation, website, ICRA 2010.
• Reciprocal n-Body Collision Avoidance, Robotics Research 2011.
• The Hybrid Reciprocal Velocity Obstacle, T-RO 2011.
• V-RVO: Decentralized Multi-Agent Collision Avoidance using Voronoi Diagrams and Reciprocal Velocity Obstacles, IROS 2021.
• ORCA for non-holonomic robots:
  • (ORCA-DD) Smooth and Collision-Free Navigation for Multiple Robots Under Differential-Drive Constraints, IROS 2010.
  • (Non-holomomic ORCA) Optimal Reciprocal Collision Avoidance for Multiple Non-Holonomic Robots, Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems 2013.
• Relaxing the Limitations of the Optimal Reciprocal Collision Avoidance Algorithm for Mobile Robots in Crowds, RA-L 2024.

ROS navigation stack

• (DWA) The Dynamic Window Approach to Collision Avoidance, Robotics and Automation Magazine 1997.
  • Dynamic Adaptive Dynamic Window Approach, T-RO 2024.
• (TEB) Time Elastic Band Planner, paper series 2012-2017.
  • (Human-aware TEB) Human-Aware Navigation Planner for Diverse Human-Robot Contexts, IROS 2021.

Model Predictive Control (MPC)

• Model Predictive Contouring Control for Collision Avoidance in Unstructured Dynamic Environments, RA-L 2019.
• Anticipatory Navigation in Crowds by Probabilistic Prediction of Pedestrian Future Movements, ICRA 2021.
• Collision Avoidance in Tightly-Constrained Environments without Coordination: a Hierarchical Control Approach, ICRA 2021.
• Group-based Motion Prediction for Navigation in Crowded Environments, CoRL 2021.
• Integrating Predictive Motion Uncertainties with Distributionally Robust Risk-Aware Control for Safe Robot Navigation in Crowds, ICRA 2024.
• SICNav: Safe and Interactive Crowd Navigation Using Model Predictive Control and Bilevel Optimization, T-RO 2024.
• Multi-Robot Cooperative Navigation in Crowds: A Game-Theoretic Learning-Based Model Predictive Control Approach, ICRA 2024.
• Active Inference-Based Planning for Safe Human-Robot Interaction: Concurrent Consideration of Human Characteristic and Rationality, RA-L 2024.
• SICNav: Safe and Interactive Crowd Navigation using Model Predictive Control and Bilevel Optimization, T-RO 2024.
• (DR-MPC) DR-MPC: Deep Residual Model Predictive Control for Real-world Social Navigation, RA-L 2025.

Potential Field & Force-based Methods

• (Social Force) Social Force Model for Pedestrian Dynamics, Physics Review 1995.
• Robot Companion: A Social-Force based approach with Human Awareness-Navigation in Crowded Environments, IROS 2013.
• Socially-Aware Reactive Obstacle Avoidance Strategy Based on Limit Cycle, RA-L 2020.

Sample-based Planning

• Robot Local Planner: A Periodic Sampling-Based Motion Planner with Minimal Waypoints for Home Environments, ICRA 2025.

Game Theory

• Mixed-Strategy Nash Equilibrium for Crowd Navigation, arXiv 2024.
• Inferring Occluded Agent Behavior in Dynamic Games from Noise Corrupted Observations, RA-L 2024.

Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM)

• Socially-Aware Navigation Planner Using Models of Human-Human Interaction, RO-MAN 2017.

Gaussian Process

• Unfreezing the Robot: Navigation in Dense, Interacting Crowds, IROS 2010.

Topological Braids

• Social Momentum: Design and Evaluation of a Framework for Socially Competent Robot Navigation, THRI 2022.
• Winding Through: Crowd Navigation via Topological Invariance, RA-L 2023.

Miscellaneous

• Seeking a path through the crowd: Robot navigation in unknown dynamic environments with moving obstacles based on an integrated environment representation, Robotics and Autonomous Systems 2014.
• Avoiding Dense and Dynamic Obstacles in Enclosed Spaces: Application to Moving in Crowds, T-RO 2022.

Learning-based Methods

Supervised Learning

• Deep-Learned Collision Avoidance Policy for Distributed Multi-Agent Navigation, RA-L 2017.
• Socially Compliant Navigation through Raw Depth Inputs with Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning, ICRA 2018.
• Deep local trajectory replanning and control for robot navigation, ICRA 2019.
• Towards Safe Navigation Through Crowded Dynamic Environments, IROS 2021.
• Towards Imitation Learning in Real World Unstructured Social Mini-Games in Pedestrian Crowds, arXiv 2024.
• SACSoN: Scalable Autonomous Control for Social Navigation, RA-L 2023.
• SocialGAIL: Faithful Crowd Simulation for Social Robot Navigation, ICRA 2024.
• Towards Imitation Learning in Real World Unstructured Social Mini-Games in Pedestrian Crowds, arXiv 2024.
• Crowd Perception Communication-Based Multi- Agent Path Finding With Imitation Learning, RA-L 2024.

Reinforcement Learning

• Domain randomization

  • Domain Randomization for Learning to Navigate in Human Environments, RA-L 2025.

• Using detected pedestrian states as input

  • (CADRL) Decentralized noncommunicating multiagent collision avoidance with deep reinforcement learning, ICRA 2017.
  • Socially aware motion planning with deep reinforcement learning, IROS 2017.
  • (LSTM-RL) Motion Planning Among Dynamic, Decision-Making Agents with Deep Reinforcement Learning, IROS 2018.
  • (OM-SARL) Crowd-robot interaction: Crowd-aware robot navigation with attention-based deep reinforcement learning, ICRA 2019.
  • Robot Navigation in Crowds by Graph Convolutional Networks with Attention Learned from Human Gaze, RA-L 2020.
  • Decentralized structural-RNN for robot crowd navigation with deep reinforcement learning, ICRA 2021.
  • Occlusion-Aware Crowd Navigation Using People as Sensors, ICRA 2023.
  • (DR-MPC) DR-MPC: Deep Residual Model Predictive Control for Real-world Social Navigation, RA-L 2025.

• Using raw sensor data as input

  • Towards Optimally Decentralized Multi-Robot Collision Avoidance via Deep Reinforcement Learning, ICRA 2018.
  • Distributed Multi-Robot Collision Avoidance via Deep Reinforcement Learning for Navigation in Complex Scenarios, IJRR 2020.
  • Learning Local Planners for Human-aware Navigation in Indoor Environments, IROS 2020.
  • Robot Navigation in Constrained Pedestrian Environments using Reinforcement Learning, ICRA 2021.
  • Towards Multi-Modal Perception-Based Navigation: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Method, RA-L 2021.
  • NavDreams: Towards Camera-Only RL Navigation Among Humans, IROS 2022.

• Combining human trajectory prediction and robot planning

  • (RGL) Relational Graph Learning for Crowd Navigation, IROS 2020.
  • DenseCAvoid: Real-time Navigation in Dense Crowds using Anticipatory Behaviors, ICRA 2020.
  • Socially Aware Crowd Navigation with Multimodal Pedestrian Trajectory Prediction for Autonomous Vehicles, ITSC 2020.
  • Intent-Aware Pedestrian Prediction for Adaptive Crowd Navigation, ICRA 2020.
  • Path Planning in Dynamic Environments using Generative RNNs and Monte Carlo Tree Search, ICRA 2020.
  • Mobile Robot Navigation Using Learning-Based Method Based on Predictive State Representation in a Dynamic Environment, IEEE SII 2022.
  • Intention Aware Robot Crowd Navigation with Attention-Based Interaction Graph, ICRA 2023.
  • Stranger Danger! Identifying and Avoiding Unpredictable Pedestrians in RL-based Social Robot Navigation, arXiv 2024.
  • From Cognition to Precognition: A Future-Aware Framework for Social Navigation, ICRA 2025.

• Constrained crowd navigation with both humans and obstacles

  • Robot Navigation in Crowded Environments Using Deep Reinforcement Learning, IROS 2020.
  • DenseCAvoid, ICRA 2020.
  • Robot Navigation in Constrained Pedestrian Environments using Reinforcement Learning, ICRA 2021.
  • NavRep: Unsupervised Representations for Reinforcement Learning of Robot Navigation in Dynamic Human Environments, ICRA 2021.
  • DRL-VO: Learning to Navigate Through Crowded Dynamic Scenes Using Velocity Obstacles, T-RO 2023.
  • Sample-Efficient Learning-Based Dynamic Environment Navigation With Transferring Experience From Optimization-Based Planner, RA-L 2024.

• Reward function design

  • Human-Inspired Multi-Agent Navigation using Knowledge Distillation, IROS 2021.
  • DWA-RL: Dynamically Feasible Deep Reinforcement Learning Policy for Robot Navigation among Mobile Obstacles, ICRA 2021.
  • Reinforcement Learned Distributed Multi-Robot Navigation With Reciprocal Velocity Obstacle Shaped Rewards, RA-L 2022.
  • DRL-VO, T-RO 2023.
  • Intention Aware Robot Crowd Navigation with Attention-Based Interaction Graph, ICRA 2023.
  • Relative Velocity-Based Reward Model for Socially-Aware Navigation with Deep Reinforcement Learning, ICRA 2025.

• Using graph attention/transformer network to model interactions

  • RGL, IROS 2020.
  • DS-RNN, ICRA 2021.
  • Intention Aware Robot Crowd Navigation with Attention-Based Interaction Graph, ICRA 2023.
  • ST²: Spatial-Temporal State Transformer for Crowd-Aware Autonomous Navigation, RA-L 2023.
  • DRL-VO, T-RO 2023.
  • Intention Aware Robot Crowd Navigation with Attention-Based Interaction Graph, ICRA 2023.
  • Sample-Efficient Learning-Based Dynamic Environment Navigation With Transferring Experience From Optimization-Based Planner, RA-L 2024.
  • Socially aware object goal navigation with heterogeneous scene representation learning, RA-L 2024.

Hybrid Approaches

Model-based methods + RL

• Relaxing the Limitations of the Optimal Reciprocal Collision Avoidance Algorithm for Mobile Robots in Crowds, RA-L 2024.

Sample-based planning + Imitation Learning

• Deep Local Trajectory Replanning and Control for Robot Navigation, ICRA 2019.
• Rethinking social robot navigation: Leveraging the best of two worlds, ICRA 2024.

Sample-based planning + RL

• A Hierarchical Approach for Mobile Robot Exploration in Pedestrian Crowd, RA-L 2022.
• Sample-Efficient Learning-Based Dynamic Environment Navigation With Transferring Experience From Optimization-Based Planner, RA-L 2024.
• A Hybrid Approach to Indoor Social Navigation: Integrating Reactive Local Planning and Proactive Global Planning, ICRA 2025.
• Learning Dynamic Weight Adjustment for Spatial-Temporal Trajectory Planning in Crowd Navigation, ICRA 2025.

Others

• Human-Robot Cooperative Distribution Coupling for Hamiltonian-Constrained Social Navigation, ICRA 2025.
• CrowdSurfer: Sampling Optimization Augmented with Vector-Quantized Variational AutoEncoder for Dense Crowd Navigation, ICRA 2025.

Foundation Models for Social Navigation

• SRLM: Human-in-Loop Interactive Social Robot Navigation with Large Language Model and Deep Reinforcement Learning, arXiv 2024.
• Socially Aware Robot Navigation through Scoring Using Vision-Language Models, arXiv 2024.
• GSON: A Group-based Social Navigation Framework with Large Multimodal Model, arXiv 2024.
• Social-LLaVA: Enhancing Robot Navigation through Human-Language Reasoning in Social Spaces, arXiv 2024.
• OLiVia-Nav: An Online Lifelong Vision Language Approach for Mobile Robot Social Navigation, ICRA 2025.

Explainability and Trust

• Generating Causal Explanations of Vehicular Agent Behavioural Interactions with Learnt Reward Profiles, ICRA 2025.

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Environment Models

Pedestrian Behavior Modeling

Review: A review on crowd simulation and modeling, Graphical Models 2020.

• Social LSTM: Human Trajectory Prediction in Crowded Spaces, CVPR 2016.
• Modeling Cooperative Navigation in Dense Human Crowds, ICRA 2017.
• Social attention: Modeling attention in human crowds, ICRA 2018.
• STGAT: Modeling Spatial-Temporal Interactions for Human Trajectory Prediction, ICCV 2019.
• From Crowd Simulation to Robot Navigation in Crowds, RA-L 2020.
• Group Split and Merge Prediction With 3D Convolutional Networks, RA-L 2020.
• Meta-path analysis on spatio-temporal graphs for pedestrian trajectory prediction, ICRA 2022.

Dynamic Scene Modeling/Evaluation

Occupancy map prediction

• Stochastic Occupancy Grid Map Prediction in Dynamic Scenes, CoRL 2023.
• SCOPE: Stochastic Cartographic Occupancy Prediction Engine for Uncertainty-Aware Dynamic Navigation, arXiv 2024.

Occlusion inference

• Occlusion-Aware Crowd Navigation Using People as Sensors, ICRA 2023.
• RMRL: Robot Navigation in Crowd Environments With Risk Map-Based Deep Reinforcement Learning, RA-L 2024.
• Inferring Occluded Agent Behavior in Dynamic Games from Noise Corrupted Observations, RA-L 2024.

Map generation

• (SNGNN2D) Generation of Human-aware Navigation Maps using Graph Neural Networks, International Conference on Innovative Techniques and Applications of Artificial Intelligence 2021.
• Fast Online Learning of CLiFF-maps in Changing Environments, ICRA 2025.

Complexity evaluation

• Characterizing the Complexity of Social Robot Navigation Scenarios, RA-L 2025.

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User Studies

• Social Momentum, THRI 2022.
• How Do Robot Experts Measure the Success of Social Robot Navigation?, HRI 2024.
• Overlapping Social Navigation Principles: A Framework for Social Robot Navigation, ICRA 2025.

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Workshops

• Social Robot Navigation: Advances and Evaluation, ICRA 2022.
• The 2nd Workshop on Social Robot Navigation: Advances and Evaluation, IROS 2023.
• The Last-Mile Robotics Workshop: Envisioning Effective, Sustainable and Human-Centric Delivery, IROS 2023.
• Unsolved Problems in Social Robot Navigation, RSS 2024.

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References

Part of this repo is adapted from the literature review of the following papers/repos:

• S. Liu, H. Xia, F. Cheraghi Pouria, K. Hong, N. Chakraborty, and K. Driggs-Campbell, "HEIGHT: Heterogeneous Interaction Graph Transformer for Robot Navigation in Crowded and Constrained Environments," arXiv 2024.
• S. Liu, P. Chang, W. Liang, N. Chakraborty, and K. Driggs-Campbell, "Decentralized Structural-RNN for Robot Crowd Navigation with Deep Reinforcement Learning," in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2023, pp. 3517-3524.
• S. Liu, P. Chang, Z. Huang, N. Chakraborty, K. Hong, W. Liang, D. Livingston McPherson, J. Geng, and K. Driggs-Campbell, "Intention Aware Robot Crowd Navigation with Attention-Based Interaction Graph," in IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 2021, pp. 12015-12021.
• H. Karnan, A. Nair, X. Xiao, G. Warnell, S. Pirk, A. Toshev, J. Hart, J. Biswas, and P. Stone, "Socially CompliAnt Navigation Dataset (SCAND): A Large-Scale Dataset Of Demonstrations For Social Navigation," IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 11807-11814, 2022.
• Z. Xie and P. Dames, "DRL-VO: Learning to Navigate Through Crowded Dynamic Scenes Using Velocity Obstacles," IEEE Transactions on Robotics, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 2700-2719, 2023.
• learning-based-navigation-list, Github.
• ICRA 2025 Paper List, Github.