Vision-Language Navigation

Also known as VLN

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41 papers in the last four weeks, up 193% on the four weeks before. 0.4% of all new papers.

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What do VLM-Based Vision-Language Navigation Models Rely on: Interpreting and Steering Policy Behavior
Sep 21, 2026Débora Oliveira Makowski, Samiran Gode, Abhijeet Nayak +4Vision-Language Models VLM Interpretability
University of Technology Nuremberg. · ETH Zürich. · Inria, Ecole Normale Sup´erieure, CNRS, PSL Research University.
A Topological Representation with Object-Path Graphs for Open-Vocabulary Instance Navigation
Sep 21, 2026Linwei Zheng, Daojie Peng, Bingtao Wang +2Robot Navigation Vision-Language Navigation
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou) · The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Structured World-State Reasoning for Agentic Robotic Search
Sep 20, 2026Finley R. Holt, Luis A. Pabon, John Irvin Alora +2Visual Navigation Embodied Navigation
Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University
RiverVLN: Phase-Grounded Temporal Vision--Language Navigation for Unmanned Surface Vehicles
Sep 20, 2026Jieling Wu, Yuehao Huang, Jiajun Lv +3Robot Navigation Vision-Language Navigation
Navi-Agent: Unlocalized Monocular Navigation Agent
Sep 17, 2026Wenyuan Xie, Mengyang Hong, Yongzhong Wang +9Robot Navigation Vision-Language Navigation
Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Southern University of Science and Technology · Xinjiang University of Finance and Economics +1
GPT-6-Astra in a Navigation Workflow: Behavioral Analysis in Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation in Continuous Environments
Sep 17, 2026Guangzhao Dai, Qi Wu, Bin ZhuLarge Language Model-Based Robot Planning Vision-Language Navigation
School of Computing and Information Systems, Singapore Management University · Australia Institute for Machine Learning
TADreamer: Zero-Shot Language-Guided 3D Navigation for Terrestrial-Aerial Bimodal Robots via Video Imagination
Sep 17, 2026Xiangyu Li, Tiancheng Lai, Xijie Huang +7Aerial Robotics Robot Navigation
State Key Laboratory of Industrial Control Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China · Huzhou Institute of Zhejiang University, Huzhou 313000, China · Institute of Cyber-Systems and Control, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China
AdaGeoVLN: Selective Geometry Across Representation Depth and Navigation Time for Vision-Language Navigation
Sep 16, 2026Quan-Dung Pham, Anh Dao, Danh Vinh Le +7Vision-Language Navigation
VinMotion, Inc., Vietnam · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA · University of Southern California, USA
GroundingVLN: Reasoning and Acting with Grounding for Vision-Language Navigation
Sep 16, 2026Kailing Li, Yu Han, Tianwen Qian +4Vision-Language Navigation Vision-Language Grounding
School of Computer Science and Technology, East China Normal University · NeoteAI · King Abdullah University of Science and Technology
VLM-MPPI: Grounding Natural Language in Behaviorally Diverse Trajectories for Aerial Navigation
Sep 16, 2026Hanbing Zhang, Fangguo Zhao, Zerui Li +3UAV Navigation Vision-Language Navigation
College of Control Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China · Australian Institute for Machine Learning, Adelaide University
ENCP: Episode-Normalized Conformal Prediction for Vision-and-Language Navigation
Sep 15, 2026Vicky Feliren, A. Taufiq Asyhari, Muhamad Risqi U. SaputraConformal Prediction Vision-Language Navigation
Monash University, Indonesia
EgoPathBench: Evaluating Zero-Shot Egocentric Waypoint Decision-Making in Vision-Language Models
Sep 15, 2026Yang Zhao, Zhuo Chen, Xubo YangVLM Evaluation Spatial Reasoning Benchmarks
Shanghai Jiao Tong University
UDAV: Uncertainty-Driven Adaptive VLM Waypoint Planner
Sep 14, 2026Ghazal Farhani, Shabnam ShabaniUncertainty Estimation for VLA Models Trajectory Generation
The authors are with the Automotive and Surface Transportation Research Centre, National Research Council Canada, London, Ontario, Canada.
HarnessVLN: Unifying Training-Free Embodied Navigation through an Agent Harness
Sep 14, 2026Yang Chen, Lirong Che, Zhenyu Huang +7Embodied Navigation Large Language Model-Based Robot Planning
Nanjing University · AGIBOT · Tsinghua University
C $^2$ Nav: Compare Before You Commit for Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation
Sep 14, 2026Runtian Zheng, Congpeng Zhang, Ying LiuVision-Language Navigation VLM Reasoning
North China University of Technology, Beijing, China
LG-VLN: A Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation Framework with LangGraph State Orchestration
Sep 14, 2026Jianhe Zhao, Yanhua Qiu, Zhiyu Zhang +2Vision-Language Navigation
School of Geodesy and Geomatics, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China · School of Computer Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China · Academy of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
AnchorVLN: Geometry-Anchored Vision-Language Grounding Reasoning for Open-Vocabulary Navigation
Sep 14, 2026Long Giang Vu, Chengkai Yao, Yuxin Liu +2Vision-Language Navigation Vision-Language Grounding
*These authors contributed equally.
Assisted Spatial Cognition Through Vision-Language Models
Sep 14, 2026H. Riaz, J. B. Fernandez, I. Mills +3Visual Spatial Reasoning Vision-Language Navigation
School of Electronic Engineering, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland · Insight Research Ireland Centre for Data Analytics, Dublin, Ireland · South East Technological University, Waterford, Ireland
TANGO: Humanoid Navigation in Cluttered Environments with a Whole-Body Vision-Language-Action Model
Sep 8, 2026Anqi Li, Yuxin Chen, Zhaobo Li +4Robot Navigation Humanoid Robot Control
University of California, Berkeley · Peking University · Tsinghua University +2
AirAnchor: Bridging Local and Global Spatial Information for Zero-Shot Aerial Vision-and-Language Navigation
Sep 8, 2026Shanwei Fan, Bin Zhang, Zhiwei Xu +4Zero-Shot Learning UAV Navigation
National Key Laboratory of Cognition and Decision Intelligence for Complex Systems, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, China
Dual-Layer Semantic-Spatial Belief Mapping for Aerial Object Goal Navigation
Sep 8, 2026Jianqiang Xiao, Xiang Deng, Yuexuan Sun +3UAV Navigation Vision-Language Navigation
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MULTIMEDIA
Revisiting Topological Graphs for Macro Action based Closed-loop Reinforcement Learning of Vision Language Navigation in Continuous Environment
Sep 3, 2026Shuhao Ye, Sitong Mao, Yuxiang Cui +7Robot Navigation Hierarchical RL
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China · Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd · Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center, Ningbo, China
Air-Ground Collaborative Vision-and-Language Navigation via Shared Bird's-Eye Maps
Sep 3, 2026Shuning Zhang, Liang Li, Yunheng Wang +3Robot Navigation UAV Navigation
Robotics and Autonomous Systems Thrust, Systems Hub, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), China · School of Communications and Information Engineering, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China
LookStep: Efficient Vision-Language Navigation with Linguistic Foresight and Event Driven Memory
Sep 2, 2026Kun-Yang Yu, Yingzhe Li, Hongyu Xu +8Vision-Language Navigation
National Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University · TermiTech · School of Artificial Intelligence, Nanjing University +1
VerNav: Verifier-First Low-Latency Vision-and-Language Navigation
Sep 1, 2026Zhixin Wang, Chengzheyi Yao, Leyuan Liu +2Efficient VLM Inference Vision-Language Navigation
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
UrbanGround: From Local Perception to Spatial Agency in a Real-Scale City
Aug 27, 2026Tianjie Ju, Zheng Wu, Yueqing Sun +15Spatial Reasoning Benchmarks Robot Navigation
Shanghai Jiao Tong University · National University of Singapore · Meituan +3
HumanoidVLN: A Physics-Grounded Simulator and Benchmark for Vision-Language Navigation Across Diverse Humanoid Embodiments
Aug 13, 2026Quan-Dung Pham, Anh Dao, The-Anh Nguyen +8Robotics Simulation Vision-Language Navigation
VinMotion, Inc., Vietnam · University of Southern California, USA
AirForesight: Current-to-Future Spatial Map Imagination with Cross-Space Planning Consistency for UAV-VLN
Aug 13, 2026Yutong Liu, Xiaojie Li, Mingzhu Xu +1Visual Spatial Reasoning UAV Navigation
Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen Shenzhen, China · Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen Shenzhen Loop Area Institute Shenzhen, China · Shandong University Jinan, China
SAP-Nav: Spatial Semantic Representation Meets Active Perception for Hierarchical Open-Vocabulary Object Navigation
Aug 13, 2026Xuetong Pei, Jian Liu, Vidura Munasinghe +4Active Perception Embodied Navigation
1Beihang University · 2Singapore University of Technology and Design · 3AIML, Adelaide University
DreamFly: Causal Memory and Receding-Horizon Diffusion Planning for Aerial Vision-Language Navigation
Aug 12, 2026Yan Deng, Fei XuMemory-Augmented VLMs Diffusion-Based Planning
School of Electronic Information Engineering, Xi’an Technological University, Xi’an, China · School of Computer Science and Engineering, Xi’an Technological University, Xi’an, China

Sep 21, 2026, cs.ROJ/K move · Enter open · S save

What do VLM-Based Vision-Language Navigation Models Rely on: Interpreting and Steering Policy Behavior

Débora Oliveira Makowski, Samiran Gode, Abhijeet Nayak, Marco Hutter+3

University of Technology Nuremberg. · ETH Zürich. · Inria, Ecole Normale Sup´erieure, CNRS, PSL Research University.

Vision-Language Models VLM Interpretability Vision-Language Navigation Activation Steering

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Modern Vision-Language Navigation (VLN) models rely mostly on pre-trained large Vision-Language Models (VLMs) to predict navigation actions. While this fusion of language instructions and visual observations allows multimodal reasoning, it obscures how information is routed across modalities or what mechanisms drive navigation decisions. Thus, it remains unclear whether VLN models ground their predictions in relevant semantic cues or can track task progress. In this work, we study the interpretability and steerability of VLN models. We use intervention-based metrics that measure how visual observations, instructions, and visual memory causally influence navigation decisions. Our results show that these navigation policies are sensitive to all input modalities and do not depend on a single one. We further show that these agents encode navigation progress and retain semantic structure from their VLM backbones, enabling concept-level steering through internal activations. Finally, we extract activation vectors for abstract behaviors to transfer them zero-shot to out-of-distribution real-world scenarios, improving performance without additional fine-tuning.

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Latest papers 194