# Towards Long-Horizon Vision-Language Navigation: Platform, Benchmark and Method

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.09082 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09082/

## Key facts

- Cited by 67 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 44 of its 54 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Dec 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Objaverse: A Universe of Annotated 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08051/) (2022)
- [Habitat: A Platform for Embodied AI Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01201/) (2019)
- [MVBench: A Comprehensive Multi-modal Video Understanding Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.17005/) (2023)
- [Vision-and-Language Navigation: Interpreting visually-grounded navigation instructions in real environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07280/) (2017)
- [AI2-THOR: An Interactive 3D Environment for Visual AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.05474/) (2017)
- [EVA-CLIP: Improved Training Techniques for CLIP at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15389/) (2023)
- [LLM-Planner: Few-Shot Grounded Planning for Embodied Agents with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04088/) (2022)
- [Beyond the Nav-Graph: Vision-and-Language Navigation in Continuous Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02857/) (2020)
- [REVERIE: Remote Embodied Visual Referring Expression in Real Indoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.10151/) (2019)
- [Recognize Anything: A Strong Image Tagging Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03514/) (2023)
- [Holodeck: Language Guided Generation of 3D Embodied AI Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09067/) (2023)
- [Vision-and-Dialog Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.04957/) (2019)
- [NaVid: Video-based VLM Plans the Next Step for Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.15852/) (2024)
- [RoboGen: Towards Unleashing Infinite Data for Automated Robot Learning via Generative Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01455/) (2023)
- [Cognitive Mapping and Planning for Visual Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.03920/) (2017)
- [Aligning Cyber Space with Physical World: A Comprehensive Survey on Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.06886/) (2024)
- [ETPNav: Evolving Topological Planning for Vision-Language Navigation in Continuous Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03047/) (2023)
- [Habitat Synthetic Scenes Dataset (HSSD-200): An Analysis of 3D Scene Scale and Realism Tradeoffs for ObjectGoal Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11290/) (2023)
- [InstructNav: Zero-shot System for Generic Instruction Navigation in Unexplored Environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04882/) (2024)
- [BEHAVIOR-1K: A Human-Centered, Embodied AI Benchmark with 1,000 Everyday Activities and Realistic Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09227/) (2024)
- [Towards Learning a Generalist Model for Embodied Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02010/) (2023)
- [Bridging the Gap Between Learning in Discrete and Continuous Environments for Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02764/) (2022)
- [Stay on the Path: Instruction Fidelity in Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.12255/) (2019)
- [DDCoT: Duty-Distinct Chain-of-Thought Prompting for Multimodal Reasoning in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.16436/) (2023)
- [FILM: Following Instructions in Language with Modular Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.07342/) (2021)
- [RoboVQA: Multimodal Long-Horizon Reasoning for Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.00899/) (2023)
- [SOON: Scenario Oriented Object Navigation with Graph-based Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17138/) (2021)
- [Vision-and-Language Navigation: A Survey of Tasks, Methods, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.12667/) (2022)
- [Habitat-Matterport 3D Semantics Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.05633/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 67)

- [EmbodiedBench: Comprehensive Benchmarking Multi-modal Large Language Models for Vision-Driven Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09560/) (2025)
- [Openfly: A comprehensive platform for aerial vision-language navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.18041/) (2025)
- [OctoNav: Towards Generalist Embodied Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09839/) (2025)
- [UAV-Flow Colosseo: A Real-World Benchmark for Flying-on-a-Word UAV Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.15725/) (2025)
- [Beyond the Destination: A Novel Benchmark for Exploration-Aware Embodied Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11117/) (2025)
- [A Survey on Agentic Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10991/) (2025)
- [VLNVerse: A Benchmark for Vision-Language Navigation with Versatile, Embodied, Realistic Simulation and Evaluation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19021/) (2025)
- [Towards Physically Executable 3D Gaussian for Embodied Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.21307/) (2025)
- [A Survey of Robotic Navigation and Manipulation with Physics Simulators in the Era of Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.01458/) (2025)
- [LongFly: Long-Horizon UAV Vision-and-Language Navigation with Spatiotemporal Context Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22010/) (2025)
- [Explore with Long-term Memory: A Benchmark and Multimodal LLM-based Reinforcement Learning Framework for Embodied Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10744/) (2026)
- [IndoorUAV: Benchmarking Vision-Language UAV Navigation in Continuous Indoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19024/) (2025)
- [HA-VLN 2.0: An Open Benchmark and Leaderboard for Human-Aware Navigation in Discrete and Continuous Environments with Dynamic Multi-Human Interactions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.14229/) (2025)
- [Modality-Inconsistent Continual Learning of Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13050/) (2024)
- [DeliveryBench: Can Agents Earn Profit in Real World?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19234/) (2025)
- [CapNav: Benchmarking Vision Language Models on Capability-conditioned Indoor Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.18424/) (2026)
- [Bridging the 2D-3D Gap: A Hierarchical Semantic-Geometric Map for Vision Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00095/) (2026)
- [Breakpoint: Scalable evaluation of system-level reasoning in LLM code agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.00172/) (2025)
- [Generating Vision-Language Navigation Instructions Incorporated Fine-Grained Alignment Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08566/) (2025)
- [Mobile-Agent-RAG: Driving Smart Multi-Agent Coordination with Contextual Knowledge Empowerment for Long-Horizon Mobile Automation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12254/) (2025)
- [Vision to Geometry: 3D Spatial Memory for Sequential Embodied MLLM Reasoning and Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.02458/) (2025)
- [D3D-VLP: Dynamic 3D Vision-Language-Planning Model for Embodied Grounding and Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12622/) (2025)
- [AgriVLN: Vision-and-Language Navigation for Agricultural Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07406/) (2025)
- [OVSeg3R: Learn Open-vocabulary Instance Segmentation from 2D via 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23541/) (2025)
- [ToolScope: An Agentic Framework for Vision-Guided and Long-Horizon Tool Use](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.27363/) (2025)
- [Expand Your SCOPE: Semantic Cognition over Potential-Based Exploration for Embodied Visual Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.08935/) (2025)
- [Embodied AI with Foundation Models for Mobile Service Robots: A Systematic Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20503/) (2025)
- [UNeMo: Collaborative Visual-Language Reasoning and Navigation via a Multimodal World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.18845/) (2025)
- [SeqWalker: Sequential-Horizon Vision-and-Language Navigation with Hierarchical Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04699/) (2026)
- [LookasideVLN: Direction-Aware Aerial Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.17190/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Existing Vision-Language Navigation (VLN) methods primarily focus on single-stage navigation, limiting their effectiveness in multi-stage and long-horizon tasks within complex and dynamic environments. To address these limitations, we propose a novel VLN task, named Long-Horizon Vision-Language Navigation (LH-VLN), which emphasizes long-term planning and decision consistency across consecutive subtasks. Furthermore, to support LH-VLN, we develop an automated data generation platform NavGen, which constructs datasets with complex task structures and improves data utility through a bidirectional, multi-granularity generation approach. To accurately evaluate complex tasks, we construct the Long-Horizon Planning and Reasoning in VLN (LHPR-VLN) benchmark consisting of 3,260 tasks with an average of 150 task steps, serving as the first dataset specifically designed for the long-horizon vision-language navigation task. Furthermore, we propose Independent Success Rate (ISR), Conditional Success Rate (CSR), and CSR weight by Ground Truth (CGT) metrics, to provide fine-grained assessments of task completion. To improve model adaptability in complex tasks, we propose a novel Multi-Granularity Dynamic Memory (MGDM) module that integrates short-term memory blurring with long-term memory retrieval to enable flexible navigation in dynamic environments. Our platform, benchmark and method supply LH-VLN with a robust data generation pipeline, comprehensive model evaluation dataset, reasonable metrics, and a novel VLN model, establishing a foundational framework for advancing LH-VLN.