# GraphPad: Inference-Time 3D Scene Graph Updates for Embodied Question Answering

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.01174 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01174/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Jun 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [Habitat-Matterport 3D Dataset (HM3D): 1000 Large-scale 3D Environments for Embodied AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.08238/) (2021)
- [C-Pack: Packed Resources For General Chinese Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07597/) (2023)
- [OpenScene: 3D Scene Understanding with Open Vocabularies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15654/) (2022)
- [Visual Language Maps for Robot Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.05714/) (2022)
- [ConceptGraphs: Open-Vocabulary 3D Scene Graphs for Perception and Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16650/) (2023)
- [Embodied Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11543/) (2017)
- [Hierarchical Open-Vocabulary 3D Scene Graphs for Language-Grounded Robot Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17846/) (2024)
- [Hydra: A Real-time Spatial Perception System for 3D Scene Graph Construction and Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.13360/) (2022)
- [PLA: Language-Driven Open-Vocabulary 3D Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.16312/) (2022)
- [Kimera: from SLAM to Spatial Perception with 3D Dynamic Scene Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06894/) (2021)
- [Clio: Real-time Task-Driven Open-Set 3D Scene Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13696/) (2024)
- [3D-Mem: 3D Scene Memory for Embodied Exploration and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17735/) (2024)
- [Mobility VLA: Multimodal Instruction Navigation with Long-Context VLMs and Topological Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07775/) (2024)
- [Language-Grounded Dynamic Scene Graphs for Interactive Object Search with Mobile Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08605/) (2024)
- [ReMEmbR: Building and Reasoning Over Long-Horizon Spatio-Temporal Memory for Robot Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.13682/) (2024)
- [SayNav: Grounding Large Language Models for Dynamic Planning to Navigation in New Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04077/) (2023)
- [Embodied-RAG: General Non-parametric Embodied Memory for Retrieval and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18313/) (2024)
- [KARMA: Augmenting Embodied AI Agents with Long-and-short Term Memory Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14908/) (2024)
- [GraphEQA: Using 3D Semantic Scene Graphs for Real-time Embodied Question Answering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14480/) (2024)
- [Collaborative Dynamic 3D Scene Graphs for Automated Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.06635/) (2023)
- [BUMBLE: Unifying Reasoning and Acting with Vision-Language Models for Building-wide Mobile Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.06237/) (2024)
- [DynaMem: Online Dynamic Spatio-Semantic Memory for Open World Mobile Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04999/) (2024)
- [Search3D: Hierarchical Open-Vocabulary 3D Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18431/) (2024)
- [LLM-enhanced Scene Graph Learning for Household Rearrangement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12093/) (2024)
- [Tag Map: A Text-Based Map for Spatial Reasoning and Navigation with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.15451/) (2024)
- [OpenIN: Open-Vocabulary Instance-Oriented Navigation in Dynamic Domestic Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.04279/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [ABot-AgentOS: A General Robotic Agent OS with Lifelong Multi-modal Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.10350/) (2026)
- [Budget-Constrained Embodied Perception: Four Resource Walls and a Pre-Registered Evaluation of Access-Structured Perception on Open Models at less than 31B](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.22975/) (2026)
- [Informative Viewpoint Selection for Episodic-Memory Embodied Question Answering using Omnidirectional Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.33288/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Structured scene representations are a core component of embodied agents, helping to consolidate raw sensory streams into readable, modular, and searchable formats. Due to their high computational overhead, many approaches build such representations in advance of the task. However, when the task specifications change, such static approaches become inadequate as they may miss key objects, spatial relations, and details. We introduce GraphPad, a modifiable structured memory that an agent can tailor to the needs of the task through API calls. It comprises a mutable scene graph representing the environment, a navigation log indexing frame-by-frame content, and a scratchpad for task-specific notes. Together, GraphPad serves as a dynamic workspace that remains complete, current, and aligned with the agent's immediate understanding of the scene and its task. On the OpenEQA benchmark, GraphPad attains 55.3%, a +3.0% increase over an image-only baseline using the same vision-language model, while operating with five times fewer input frames. These results show that allowing online, language-driven refinement of 3-D memory yields more informative representations without extra training or data collection.