# Vision Language Models Can Parse Floor Plan Maps

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.12842 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12842/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Embodied and 3D vision-language models, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 18 of its 60 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Sep 2024.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Embodied and 3D vision-language models](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/embodied-and-3d-vision-language-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00714/) (2024)
- [Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01691/) (2022)
- [Inner Monologue: Embodied Reasoning through Planning with Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05608/) (2022)
- [A Survey on In-context Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00234/) (2022)
- [Siren's Song in the AI Ocean: A Survey on Hallucination in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.01219/) (2023)
- [LLM+P: Empowering Large Language Models with Optimal Planning Proficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11477/) (2023)
- [Faster Segment Anything: Towards Lightweight SAM for Mobile Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14289/) (2023)
- [BAE: BERT-based Adversarial Examples for Text Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01970/) (2020)
- [Language to Rewards for Robotic Skill Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08647/) (2023)
- [Robots That Ask For Help: Uncertainty Alignment for Large Language Model Planners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.01928/) (2023)
- [Set-of-Mark Prompting Unleashes Extraordinary Visual Grounding in GPT-4V](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11441/) (2023)
- [PIVOT: Iterative Visual Prompting Elicits Actionable Knowledge for VLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07872/) (2024)
- [MOKA: Open-World Robotic Manipulation through Mark-Based Visual Prompting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03174/) (2024)
- [Toward General-Purpose Robots via Foundation Models: A Survey and Meta-Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08782/) (2023)
- [VLM-Social-Nav: Socially Aware Robot Navigation through Scoring using Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00210/) (2024)
- [CoNVOI: Context-aware Navigation using Vision Language Models in Outdoor and Indoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15637/) (2024)
- [SayTap: Language to Quadrupedal Locomotion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07580/) (2023)
- [Commonsense Reasoning for Legged Robot Adaptation with Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.02666/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [MapTrace: Scalable Data Generation for Route Tracing on Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19609/) (2025)
- [LLM-Guided Agentic Floor Plan Parsing for Accessible Indoor Navigation of Blind and Low-Vision People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.23970/) (2026)
- [Floorplan2Guide: LLM-Guided Floorplan Parsing for BLV Indoor Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12177/) (2025)
- [Towards an automated AI-based framework for floor plan compliance checks for residential buildings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.00015/) (2026)
- [VLM-based automatic multi-granularity graph representation of building layouts for design informatics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.24886/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Vision language models (VLMs) can simultaneously reason about images and texts to tackle many tasks, from visual question answering to image captioning. This paper focuses on map parsing, a novel task that is unexplored within the VLM context and particularly useful to mobile robots. Map parsing requires understanding not only the labels but also the geometric configurations of a map, i.e., what areas are like and how they are connected. To evaluate the performance of VLMs on map parsing, we prompt VLMs with floor plan maps to generate task plans for complex indoor navigation. Our results demonstrate the remarkable capability of VLMs in map parsing, with a success rate of 0.96 in tasks requiring a sequence of nine navigation actions, e.g., approaching and going through doors. Other than intuitive observations, e.g., VLMs do better in smaller maps and simpler navigation tasks, there was a very interesting observation that its performance drops in large open areas. We provide practical suggestions to address such challenges as validated by our experimental results. Webpage: https://sites.google.com/view/vlm-floorplan/