# SmartWay: Enhanced Waypoint Prediction and Backtracking for Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.10069 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10069/

## Key facts

- Cited by 29 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 32 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 13 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [InstructBLIP: Towards General-purpose Vision-Language Models with Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06500/) (2023)
- [LXMERT: Learning Cross-Modality Encoder Representations from Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07490/) (2019)
- [Matterport3D: Learning from RGB-D Data in Indoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.06158/) (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)
- [Beyond the Nav-Graph: Vision-and-Language Navigation in Continuous Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.02857/) (2020)
- [Room-Across-Room: Multilingual Vision-and-Language Navigation with Dense Spatiotemporal Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.07954/) (2020)
- [DD-PPO: Learning Near-Perfect PointGoal Navigators from 2.5 Billion Frames](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.00357/) (2019)
- [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)
- [NavGPT: Explicit Reasoning in Vision-and-Language Navigation with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16986/) (2023)
- [History Aware Multimodal Transformer for Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.13309/) (2021)
- [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)
- [Think Global, Act Local: Dual-scale Graph Transformer for Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.11742/) (2022)
- [ETPNav: Evolving Topological Planning for Vision-Language Navigation in Continuous Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03047/) (2023)
- [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)
- [GridMM: Grid Memory Map for Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12907/) (2023)
- [BEVBert: Multimodal Map Pre-training for Language-guided Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04385/) (2022)
- [Scaling Data Generation in Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15644/) (2023)
- [Discuss Before Moving: Visual Language Navigation via Multi-expert Discussions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11382/) (2023)
- [Vision-and-Language Navigation Today and Tomorrow: A Survey in the Era of Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07035/) (2024)
- [VELMA: Verbalization Embodiment of LLM Agents for Vision and Language Navigation in Street View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06082/) (2023)
- [Open-Nav: Exploring Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation in Continuous Environment with Open-Source LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18794/) (2024)
- [Constraint-Aware Zero-Shot Vision-Language Navigation in Continuous Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.10137/) (2024)
- [LangNav: Language as a Perceptual Representation for Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07889/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [CycleVLA: Proactive Self-Correcting Vision-Language-Action Models via Subtask Backtracking and Minimum Bayes Risk Decoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02295/) (2026)
- [SpatialNav: Leveraging Spatial Scene Graphs for Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.06806/) (2026)
- [HiMemVLN: Enhancing Reliability of Open-Source Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation with Hierarchical Memory System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.14807/) (2026)
- [Fast-SmartWay: Panoramic-Free End-to-End Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.00933/) (2025)
- [STRIDER: Navigation via Instruction-Aligned Structural Decision Space Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.00033/) (2025)
- [Bridging the 2D-3D Gap: A Hierarchical Semantic-Geometric Map for Vision Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00095/) (2026)
- [AgenticNav: Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation as a Tool-Calling Harness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10577/) (2026)
- [Spatial-VLN: Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation With Explicit Spatial Perception and Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12766/) (2026)
- [DAgger Diffusion Navigation: DAgger Boosted Diffusion Policy for Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09444/) (2025)
- [Three-Step Nav: A Hierarchical Global-Local Planner for Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26946/) (2026)
- [Explore Like Humans: Autonomous Exploration with Online SG-Memo Construction for Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19034/) (2026)
- [Uni-LaViRA: Language-Vision-Robot Actions Translation for Unified Embodied Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27582/) (2026)
- [Ask When It Pays: Cost-Aware Open-Ended Interaction for Instance Goal Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03175/) (2026)
- [HarnessVLN: Unifying Training-Free Embodied Navigation through an Agent Harness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.15195/) (2026)
- [Does Peer Observation Help? Vision-Sharing Collaboration for Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20804/) (2026)
- [SpatialAnt: Autonomous Zero-Shot Robot Navigation via Active Scene Reconstruction and Visual Anticipation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26837/) (2026)
- [P2DNav: Panorama-to-Downview Reasoning for Zero-shot Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19634/) (2026)
- [LightZeroNav: Zero-Shot Vision Language Navigation in Continuous Environments Based on Lightweight VLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16947/) (2026)
- [Automating the Design of Embodied Agent Architectures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30111/) (2026)
- [A Comprehensive Survey and Systematic Real-World Evaluation of Embodied Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.09792/) (2026)
- [SC2-WM: A Self-Correcting World Model with Closed-Loop Feedback for Vision-and-Language Navigation in Continuous Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.07548/) (2026)
- [From Semantic Grounding to Decision Optimization: A Unified Framework for Long-Horizon UAV Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.09564/) (2026)
- [Navi-Agent: Unlocalized Monocular Navigation Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.20388/) (2026)
- [Beyond Waypoints: A Trajectory-Centric Waypointing Paradigm for Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.07244/) (2026)
- [From Region Arrival to Instance-Level Grounding in Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.03792/) (2026)
- [One MLLM, One Call: Efficient Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation via Spatial-Aware Waypoints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.06476/) (2026)
- [Affordance-Conditioned Decision Making: Bridging the Semantic-Spatial Gap in Zero-Shot Cross-Floor Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32292/) (2026)
- [Systematic Multi-Agent Vision-and-Language Navigation: Formulation, Benchmark, and Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.35965/) (2026)
- [NavHarness: Adaptive Goals for Agentic Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.39915/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) in continuous environments requires agents to interpret natural language instructions while navigating unconstrained 3D spaces. Existing VLN-CE frameworks rely on a two-stage approach: a waypoint predictor to generate waypoints and a navigator to execute movements. However, current waypoint predictors struggle with spatial awareness, while navigators lack historical reasoning and backtracking capabilities, limiting adaptability. We propose a zero-shot VLN-CE framework integrating an enhanced waypoint predictor with a Multi-modal Large Language Model (MLLM)-based navigator. Our predictor employs a stronger vision encoder, masked cross-attention fusion, and an occupancy-aware loss for better waypoint quality. The navigator incorporates history-aware reasoning and adaptive path planning with backtracking, improving robustness. Experiments on R2R-CE and MP3D benchmarks show our method achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance in zero-shot settings, demonstrating competitive results compared to fully supervised methods. Real-world validation on Turtlebot 4 further highlights its adaptability.