The field of autonomous navigation is shifting towards a greater emphasis on safety and adaptability in shared spaces, particularly in unregulated pedestrian areas. Researchers are exploring innovative approaches to pedestrian risk assessment and mitigation, such as adapting safety measures from other contexts to shared spaces with trams. Another significant trend is the development of open-source and open-hardware platforms for swarm robotics, which provide accessible and cost-effective solutions for studying self-organizing systems and distributed intelligence. Furthermore, there is a growing interest in leveraging human intelligence and social behaviors to improve robot navigation in crowded environments.

Noteworthy papers include: Pobogot, an open-hardware open-source low-cost robot for swarm robotics, which offers advanced capabilities and an accessible alternative to existing platforms. Following Is All You Need, a novel framework that utilizes people as planners to enable safe and efficient robot navigation in crowded environments. The Robotability Score, a novel metric that quantifies the suitability of urban environments for autonomous robot navigation, aims to reduce uncertainty in robot deployment and promote harmonious human-robot environments.