# ApexNav: An Adaptive Exploration Strategy for Zero-Shot Object Navigation with Target-centric Semantic Fusion

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.14478 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.14478/

## Key facts

- Cited by 30 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 20 Apr 2025.

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

- [VLingNav: Embodied Navigation with Adaptive Reasoning and Visual-Assisted Linguistic Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.08665/) (2026)
- [DORAEMON: Decentralized Ontology-aware Reliable Agent with Enhanced Memory Oriented Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21969/) (2025)
- [Bridging the 2D-3D Gap: A Hierarchical Semantic-Geometric Map for Vision Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00095/) (2026)
- [AirHunt: Bridging VLM Semantics and Continuous Planning for Efficient Aerial Object Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12742/) (2026)
- [3DGSNav: Enhancing Vision-Language Model Reasoning for Object Navigation via Active 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12159/) (2026)
- [Stop Wandering: Efficient Vision-Language Navigation via Metacognitive Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.02318/) (2026)
- [Uni-LaViRA: Language-Vision-Robot Actions Translation for Unified Embodied Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27582/) (2026)
- [HarnessVLN: Unifying Training-Free Embodied Navigation through an Agent Harness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.15195/) (2026)
- [SoraNav: Adaptive UAV Task-Centric Navigation via Zeroshot VLM Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.25191/) (2025)
- [ContextFlow: Hierarchical Task-State Alignment for Long-Horizon Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19314/) (2026)
- [PSG-Nav: Probabilistic Scene Graph Navigation via Multiverse Decision Making](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01313/) (2026)
- [HAM-VLN: Harnessing Hierarchical Agentic Memory for Zero-Shot Vision-and-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.29600/) (2026)
- [PIGEON: VLM-Driven Object Navigation via Points of Interest Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.13207/) (2025)
- [Schr"odinger's Navigator: Imagining an Ensemble of Futures for Zero-Shot Object Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.21201/) (2025)
- [AERR-Nav: Adaptive Exploration-Recovery-Reminiscing Strategy for Zero-Shot Object Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17712/) (2026)
- [GoalVLM: VLM-driven Object Goal Navigation for Multi-Agent System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18210/) (2026)
- [TrajRAG: Retrieving Geometric-Semantic Experience for Zero-Shot Object Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01700/) (2026)
- [ConsistNav: Closing the Action Consistency Gap in Zero-Shot Object Navigation with Semantic Executive Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09869/) (2026)
- [EvoMemNav: Efficient Self-Evolving Fine-Grained Memory for Zero-Shot Embodied Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.03509/) (2026)
- [AION: Aerial Indoor Object-Goal Navigation Using Dual-Policy Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.15614/) (2026)
- [Relational Semantic Reasoning on 3D Scene Graphs for Open World Interactive Object Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.05642/) (2026)
- [REST: Receding Horizon Explorative Steiner Tree for Zero-Shot Object-Goal Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18624/) (2026)
- [HiRO-Nav: Hybrid ReasOning Enables Efficient Embodied Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08232/) (2026)
- [Where Did It Go Wrong? Capability-Oriented Failure Attribution for Vision-and-Language Navigation Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25161/) (2026)
- [Multi-Scale Gaussian-Language Map for Zero-shot Embodied Navigation and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01736/) (2026)
- [Hierarchical 3D Scene Graph Construction and Belief-based Planning for Semantic Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31071/) (2026)
- [SSTG-Nav: Metric-Grounded Spatial-Semantic Topological Graphs for Reusable Object Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.00527/) (2026)
- [LifelongCrossNav: Persistent 3D Semantic Memory for Cross-Floor Multi-Object Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.07079/) (2026)
- [CGFM-Nav: Cognitive Graph-Field Memory for Semantic-Guided Lifelong Multimodal Embodied Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29114/) (2026)
- [Beyond the Remembered World: Predictive 4D Belief for Persistent Navigation in Evolving Worlds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.39166/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Navigating unknown environments to find a target object is a significant challenge. While semantic information is crucial for navigation, relying solely on it for decision-making may not always be efficient, especially in environments with weak semantic cues. Additionally, many methods are susceptible to misdetections, especially in environments with visually similar objects. To address these limitations, we propose ApexNav, a zero-shot object navigation framework that is both more efficient and reliable. For efficiency, ApexNav adaptively utilizes semantic information by analyzing its distribution in the environment, guiding exploration through semantic reasoning when cues are strong, and switching to geometry-based exploration when they are weak. For reliability, we propose a target-centric semantic fusion method that preserves long-term memory of the target and similar objects, enabling robust object identification even under noisy detections. We evaluate ApexNav on the HM3Dv1, HM3Dv2, and MP3D datasets, where it outperforms state-of-the-art methods in both SR and SPL metrics. Comprehensive ablation studies further demonstrate the effectiveness of each module. Furthermore, real-world experiments validate the practicality of ApexNav in physical environments. The code will be released at https://github.com/Robotics-STAR-Lab/ApexNav.