SpaceVLN: A Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation Agent with Online Spatial Cognitive Memory and Reasoning

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.08992v1
• Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2026 03:42:08 GMT
• Title: SpaceVLN: A Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation Agent with Online Spatial Cognitive Memory and Reasoning
• Abstract summary: SpaceVLN is a navigation agent built around Spatial Cognitive Memory and Task-Guided Spatial Reasoning.<n>Built on this memory, Spatial-CoT integrates task-progress reasoning with spatial perception, analysis, and prediction.<n>Across R2R-CE, RxR-CE, GN-Bench, and HM3D-OVON, SpaceVLN achieves state-of-the-art zero-shot performance.
• Score: 59.64305326980364
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Vision-and-Language Navigation in continuous environments requires agents to understand the spatial structure of previously unseen environments in order to follow language instructions. Although foundation models have opened a promising path toward zero-shot navigation without task-specific policy training, many navigators still rely on local visual cues and linear history-based reasoning, overlooking the spatial nature of navigation across explored regions, traversed paths, landmarks, and their spatial relations. In this paper, we propose SpaceVLN, a navigation agent built around Spatial Cognitive Memory and Task-Guided Spatial Reasoning. Specifically, SpaceVLN introduces an efficient stagewise closed-loop framework where planning and execution are organized around verifiable space--landmark stages. During navigation, the agent progressively abstracts explored regions into Spatial Waypoints and dynamically maintains subtask-grounded landmark evidence, forming a hierarchical Spatial Cognitive Memory for progress localization and spatial-relation understanding. Built on this memory, Spatial-CoT integrates task-progress reasoning with spatial perception, analysis, and prediction, enabling Task-Guided Spatial Reasoning for embodied navigation. The unified stage interface enables SpaceVLN to address both Vision-and-Language Navigation and Object-Goal Navigation under a unified zero-shot setting, without task-specific policy training. Across R2R-CE, RxR-CE, GN-Bench, and HM3D-OVON, SpaceVLN achieves state-of-the-art zero-shot performance, and real-robot deployment further validates its applicability. These results highlight Spatial Cognitive Memory and Task-Guided Spatial Reasoning as a practical foundation for stronger embodied navigation agents.

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