# Navigating to Objects Specified by Images

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.01192 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01192/

## Key facts

- Cited by 51 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 42 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Apr 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 42)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1707.06347/) (2017)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11763/) (2019)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [Habitat: A Platform for Embodied AI Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01201/) (2019)
- [Vision-and-Language Navigation: Interpreting visually-grounded navigation instructions in real environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07280/) (2017)
- [Detecting Twenty-thousand Classes using Image-level Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.02605/) (2022)
- [Habitat-Matterport 3D Dataset (HM3D): 1000 Large-scale 3D Environments for Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.08238/) (2021)
- [On Evaluation of Embodied Navigation Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06757/) (2018)
- [Habitat 2.0: Training Home Assistants to Rearrange their Habitat](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14405/) (2021)
- [Beyond the Nav-Graph: Vision-and-Language Navigation in Continuous Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02857/) (2020)
- [Object Goal Navigation using Goal-Oriented Semantic Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00643/) (2020)
- [Deep Learning for Generic Object Detection: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.02165/) (2018)
- [Target-driven Visual Navigation in Indoor Scenes using Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.05143/) (2016)
- [Learning to Explore using Active Neural SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05155/) (2020)
- [ObjectNav Revisited: On Evaluation of Embodied Agents Navigating to Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.13171/) (2020)
- [Semi-parametric Topological Memory for Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.00653/) (2018)
- [Neural Topological SLAM for Visual Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12256/) (2020)
- [ZSON: Zero-Shot Object-Goal Navigation using Multimodal Goal Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.12403/) (2022)
- [PONI: Potential Functions for ObjectGoal Navigation with Interaction-free Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.10029/) (2022)
- [Rapid Exploration for Open-World Navigation with Latent Goal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.05859/) (2021)
- [Habitat-Matterport 3D Semantics Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.05633/) (2022)
- [Navigating to Objects in the Real World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00922/) (2022)
- [Sim-2-Sim Transfer for Vision-and-Language Navigation in Continuous Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.09667/) (2022)
- [ViNG: Learning Open-World Navigation with Visual Goals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09812/) (2020)
- [Offline Visual Representation Learning for Embodied Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13226/) (2022)
- [OVRL-V2: A simple state-of-art baseline for ImageNav and ObjectNav](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07798/) (2023)
- [Zero Experience Required: Plug & Play Modular Transfer Learning for Semantic Visual Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02440/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [HomeRobot: Open-Vocabulary Mobile Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11565/) (2023)
- [GOAT-Bench: A Benchmark for Multi-Modal Lifelong Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06609/) (2024)
- [HM3D-OVON: A Dataset and Benchmark for Open-Vocabulary Object Goal Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14296/) (2024)
- [UniGoal: Towards Universal Zero-shot Goal-oriented Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10630/) (2025)
- [VLM Agents Generate Their Own Memories: Distilling Experience into Embodied Programs of Thought](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.14596/) (2024)
- [Vid2Robot: End-to-end Video-conditioned Policy Learning with Cross-Attention Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12943/) (2024)
- [GaussNav: Gaussian Splatting for Visual Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11625/) (2024)
- [CityWalker: Learning Embodied Urban Navigation from Web-Scale Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17820/) (2024)
- [OctoNav: Towards Generalist Embodied Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09839/) (2025)
- [Prioritized Semantic Learning for Zero-shot Instance Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11650/) (2024)
- [TANGO: Training-free Embodied AI Agents for Open-world Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10402/) (2024)
- [FGPrompt: Fine-grained Goal Prompting for Image-goal Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07473/) (2023)
- [Selective Visual Representations Improve Convergence and Generalization for Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04193/) (2023)
- [End-to-End (Instance)-Image Goal Navigation through Correspondence as an Emergent Phenomenon](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16634/) (2023)
- [ReALFRED: An Embodied Instruction Following Benchmark in Photo-Realistic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.18550/) (2024)
- [Instance-aware Exploration-Verification-Exploitation for Instance ImageGoal Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17587/) (2024)
- [Point Cloud Models Improve Visual Robustness in Robotic Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18926/) (2024)
- [MSGNav: Unleashing the Power of Multi-modal 3D Scene Graph for Zero-Shot Embodied Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.10376/) (2025)
- [REGNav: Room Expert Guided Image-Goal Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10785/) (2025)
- [What do we learn from a large-scale study of pre-trained visual representations in sim and real environments?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02219/) (2023)
- [Personalized Instance-based Navigation Toward User-Specific Objects in Realistic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.18195/) (2024)
- [IGL-Nav: Incremental 3D Gaussian Localization for Image-goal Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.00823/) (2025)
- [FloNa: Floor Plan Guided Embodied Visual Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.18335/) (2024)
- [GC-VLN: Instruction as Graph Constraints for Training-free Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.10454/) (2025)
- [VLingNav: Embodied Navigation with Adaptive Reasoning and Visual-Assisted Linguistic Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.08665/) (2026)
- [LookOut: Real-World Humanoid Egocentric Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14466/) (2025)
- [HELPER-X: A Unified Instructable Embodied Agent to Tackle Four Interactive Vision-Language Domains with Memory-Augmented Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19065/) (2024)
- [From reactive to cognitive: brain-inspired spatial intelligence for embodied agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17198/) (2025)
- [PersONAL: Towards a Comprehensive Benchmark for Personalized Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19843/) (2025)
- [NOLO: Navigate Only Look Once](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01384/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Images are a convenient way to specify which particular object instance an embodied agent should navigate to. Solving this task requires semantic visual reasoning and exploration of unknown environments. We present a system that can perform this task in both simulation and the real world. Our modular method solves sub-tasks of exploration, goal instance re-identification, goal localization, and local navigation. We re-identify the goal instance in egocentric vision using feature-matching and localize the goal instance by projecting matched features to a map. Each sub-task is solved using off-the-shelf components requiring zero fine-tuning. On the HM3D InstanceImageNav benchmark, this system outperforms a baseline end-to-end RL policy 7x and a state-of-the-art ImageNav model 2.3x (56% vs 25% success). We deploy this system to a mobile robot platform and demonstrate effective real-world performance, achieving an 88% success rate across a home and an office environment.