MOBIUS: A Multi-Modal Bipedal Robot that can Walk, Crawl, Climb, and Roll
Abstract
This paper presents the MOBIUS platform, a bipedal robot capable of walking, crawling, climbing, and rolling. MOBIUS features four limbs, two 6-DoF arms with two-finger grippers for manipulation and climbing, and two 4-DoF legs for locomotion--enabling smooth transitions across diverse terrains without reconfiguration. A hybrid control architecture combines reinforcement learning for locomotion and force control for compliant contact interactions during manipulation. A high-level MIQCP planner autonomously selects locomotion modes to balance stability and energy efficiency. Hardware experiments demonstrate robust gait transitions, dynamic climbing, and full-body load support via pinch grasp. Overall, MOBIUS demonstrates the importance of tight integration between morphology, high-level planning, and control to enable mobile loco-manipulation and grasping, substantially expanding its interaction capabilities, workspace, and traversability.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.01774,
title = {MOBIUS: A Multi-Modal Bipedal Robot that can Walk, Crawl, Climb, and Roll},
author = {Alexander Schperberg and Yusuke Tanaka and Stefano Di Cairano and Dennis Hong},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.01774},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Paper is accepted at the Robotics: Science and Systems conference, held in Sydney, Australia, July 13th-17th, 2026. Alexander Schperberg and Yusuke Tanaka are co-first authors. Both were at the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory (RoMeLa) at UCLA when the work started, and are now with Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories and ETH Zurich (RSL) respectively