Advanced robotics

Robots that walk, grasp and work beside people.

China leads advanced robotics research, with 31.5% of the 10% most cited papers published 2021–2025; the United States is second with 16.0%.

Added 14 October 2026. Its top papers were checked for relevance by AI, but its keywords and topic list have not yet been reviewed by hand.

FirstChina31.5%

SecondUnited States16.0%

2.0×lead, by share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025

Highlight a country

Standings

1CNChina31.5%2USUnited States16.0%3ITItaly6.4%4GBUnited Kingdom4.7%5DEGermany4.5%6HKHong Kong3.4%7–8KRSouth Korea3.2%7–8AUAustralia3.2%9CHSwitzerland3.0%10JPJapan2.7%

Share of the 10% most cited papers, 2021–2025; 703 papers. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Year by year

Share of the 10% most cited papers published in each year. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Inside the field

Always the top 10%Pilot

Each paper sorted into one sub-area by an AI model reading its title and abstract, then credited as usual. On 200 hand-labelled papers it chose the same sub-area, or a defensible second, 92% of the time.

Sub-area	Papers	First	Second	Third
Soft robots and artificial muscles	289	CNChina40.0%	USUnited States20.5%	KRSouth Korea4.1%
Human-robot interaction and collaborative robots	94	ITItaly28.8%	USUnited States12.8%	CNChina10.4%
Legged locomotion and humanoid robots	66	CNChina35.5%	USUnited States13.3%	CHSwitzerland13.1%
Grasping and dexterous manipulation	61	CNChina23.3%	USUnited States13.8%	GBUnited Kingdom7.8%
Tactile sensing and electronic skin	54	CNChina47.2%	SGSingapore7.0%	GBUnited Kingdom6.6%
Motion planning and control	48	CNChina28.7%	USUnited States13.1%	DEGermany12.3%
Robot foundation models and general-purpose robot learning	30	USUnited States27.1%	CNChina16.6%	DEGermany15.7%
Robot perception, localisation and mapping (SLAM)	12	CNChina30.6%	USUnited States9.4%	CHSwitzerland8.3%
Exoskeletons, prosthetics and rehabilitation robots	10	USUnited States23.0%	CNChina18.6%	MOMacao10.0%

Share of each sub-area's papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Earlier and recent

The same top 10%, split into 2021–2023 and 2024–2025.

FallingRising2021–20232024–2025Change

CNChina 30.7%32.4%+1.7 pts

USUnited States 17.5%14.4%−3.1 pts

ITItaly 7.4%5.3%−2.1 pts

GBUnited Kingdom 5.3%4.0%−1.3 pts

DEGermany 5.4%3.5%−1.9 pts

HKHong Kong 2.6%4.3%+1.7 pts

KRSouth Korea 3.0%3.4%+0.4 pts

AUAustralia 3.5%2.8%−0.8 pts

Share of the 10% most cited papers: 368 papers in 2021–2023, 335 in 2024–2025. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

2026 so far: a different count

Not the most cited papers: every 2026 paper matched so far (1,627), and a paper counts in full for each country on it. This year's papers are too new to rank by citations, so these shares cannot be compared with the ones above.

CNChina46.5%of 2026 papers have an author here
USUnited States13.2%of 2026 papers have an author here
KRSouth Korea6.8%of 2026 papers have an author here
GBUnited Kingdom6.5%of 2026 papers have an author here
ITItaly5.3%of 2026 papers have an author here

Who cites the top papers

How much more often a country's top papers are cited from home than its size predicts. Expected is the country's share of all papers in the field; the bar is the excess, in percentage points. Home citers include authors citing their own earlier work.

HomeExpectedExcess

CNChina 65.6%36.3%+29.3

USUnited States 21.8%17.1%+4.7

ITItaly 18.6%7.8%+10.8

GBUnited Kingdom 17.6%7.6%+10.0

Based on up to 100 of each country's most cited single-country papers in the top 10%. Source: OpenAlex, pulled 18 October 2026. Method

Behind the share

Institutions with the most credit

1CNShanghai Jiao Tong University1.9%
2CHETH Zurich1.9%
3CNZhejiang University1.8%
4DEMax Planck Institute for Intelligent SystemsResearch facility1.4%
5ITItalian Institute of TechnologyResearch facility1.4%
6CNHarbin Institute of Technology1.3%
7CNTsinghua University1.2%
8USMassachusetts Institute of Technology1.2%
9USUniversity of California San Diego1.1%
10HKChinese University of Hong Kong1.1%

Share of the top 10%. Institutions across all 45 technologies

Who does the work

Sector	All	CN	US	IT
Universities	83.4%	83.3%	93.1%	71.3%
Research facilities	11.2%	10.6%	2.1%	24.5%
Government labs	2.2%	3.8%	0.2%	0%
Companies	1.6%	1.6%	3.2%	0%

Share of credit by type of institution, overall and for the three leading countries.

Across borders

40.3% of the top 10% have authors in more than one country.

CNUSChina with United States47
CNHKChina with Hong Kong33
CHDESwitzerland with Germany19
CNSGChina with Singapore18
CNGBChina with United Kingdom17

Most frequent pairings, by number of shared papers.

The papers behind the numbers

The five most cited papers this definition catches. If one looks out of place, the definition needs work.

Self-powered soft robot in the Mariana Trench
Nature, 2021CN
1,213citations
Learning robust perceptive locomotion for quadrupedal robots in the wild
Science Robotics, 2022CHKRUS
817citations
Flexible Electronics and Devices as Human–Machine Interfaces for Medical Robotics
Advanced Materials, 2021US
604citations
Bistable and Multistable Actuators for Soft Robots: Structures, Materials, and Functionalities
Advanced Materials, 2022CNUS
587citations
Diffusion policy: Visuomotor policy learning via action diffusion
The International Journal of Robotics Research, 2024US
580citations

How this technology is defined

A paper counts if its title or abstract matches the search below. Articles in core journals and proceedings only; retracted papers are excluded.

"humanoid robot" OR "legged robot" OR "quadruped robot" OR "robotic manipulation" OR "soft robot" OR "collaborative robot" OR "dexterous manipulation"

and its main topic in OpenAlex is one of: Soft Robotics and Applications; Robot Manipulation and Learning; Robotic Locomotion and Control; Social Robot Interaction and HRI; Reinforcement Learning in Robotics; Robotic Mechanisms and Dynamics; Micro and Nano Robotics; Teleoperation and Haptic Systems. The topic check removes papers that only mention the technology.

Papers matched, 2021–2025: 7,005
In the top 10%: 703
In the top 1%: 72
Countries with credit: 54
Credit with no known country: 1.8%

Every one of the 878 most cited papers was checked for relevance; 7 were left out as not about advanced robotics

The most cited of those left out:

Viscoelastic control of spatiotemporal order in bacterial active matter156 citations
Chemical pumps and flexible sheets spontaneously form self-regulating oscillators in solution102 citations
Elephants evolved strategies reducing the biomechanical complexity of their trunk99 citations
Transformer in reinforcement learning for decision-making: a survey94 citations
Reconfigurable artificial microswimmers with internal feedback70 citations
Semi-analytical framework for nonlinear vibration analysis of hard-magnetic soft beams17 citations
Bio‐Inspired, Miniaturized Magnetic Heart Valve System for Superior Performance Cardiovascular Simulator12 citations

Definition version 0.5, pilot. It is a plain text file: copy it, change it, rerun it.

Read the method