Advances, challenges, and opportunities for legged robots

Abstract:Humanoid and quadrupedal robots have the potential to revolutionize the way we work, interact, and coexist with intelligent machines. To understand their effects on society and how they can enable scientific discovery, we assess the current capabilities of these systems along hardware, locomotion, autonomy, data, and applications. We identify recent advances and key open challenges that must be overcome to enable widespread adoption and new use cases for legged robots. Last, we provide an outlook on the future of legged robots, exploring their ethical considerations, economic potential, policy implications, and broader societal effects.

Accepted for publication in Science Robotics. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the AAAS for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Science Robotics on July 29, 2026, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.aee0787

Robotics (cs.RO)

arXiv:2607.28952 [cs.RO]

(or arXiv:2607.28952v1 [cs.RO] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2607.28952 arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Science Robotics, Vol. 11, Issue 116 (2026)

https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.aee0787 DOI(s) linking to related resources