# LOVON: Legged Open-Vocabulary Object Navigator

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.06747 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06747/

## Key facts

- Cited by 11 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 24 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12948/) (2025)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05499/) (2023)
- [Do As I Can, Not As I Say: Grounding Language in Robotic Affordances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01691/) (2022)
- [DINO: DETR with Improved DeNoising Anchor Boxes for End-to-End Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03605/) (2022)
- [Code as Policies: Language Model Programs for Embodied Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.07753/) (2022)
- [Learning Discriminative Model Prediction for Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07220/) (2019)
- [NaVILA: Legged Robot Vision-Language-Action Model for Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.04453/) (2024)
- [HumanPlus: Humanoid Shadowing and Imitation from Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10454/) (2024)
- [AMO: Adaptive Motion Optimization for Hyper-Dexterous Humanoid Whole-Body Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03738/) (2025)
- [TrackVLA: Embodied Visual Tracking in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23189/) (2025)
- [End-to-end Active Object Tracking and Its Real-world Deployment via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.03405/) (2018)
- [Towards Distraction-Robust Active Visual Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10110/) (2021)
- [Whole-body Humanoid Robot Locomotion with Human Reference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.18294/) (2024)
- [Empowering Embodied Visual Tracking with Visual Foundation Models and Offline RL](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.09857/) (2024)
- [RSPT: Reconstruct Surroundings and Predict Trajectories for Generalizable Active Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.03623/) (2023)
- [Distillation-PPO: A Novel Two-Stage Reinforcement Learning Framework for Humanoid Robot Perceptive Locomotion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08299/) (2025)
- [Trinity: A Modular Humanoid Robot AI System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08338/) (2025)
- [ES-Parkour: Advanced Robot Parkour with Bio-inspired Event Camera and Spiking Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.09985/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 11 of 11)

- [TrackVLA++: Unleashing Reasoning and Memory Capabilities in VLA Models for Embodied Visual Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.07134/) (2025)
- [Compose Your Policies! Improving Diffusion-based or Flow-based Robot Policies via Test-time Distribution-level Composition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01068/) (2025)
- [VAMOS: A Hierarchical Vision-Language-Action Model for Capability-Modulated and Steerable Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20818/) (2025)
- [Humanoid Occupancy: Enabling A Generalized Multimodal Occupancy Perception System on Humanoid Robots](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.20217/) (2025)
- [CoMaTrack: Competitive Multi-Agent Game-Theoretic Tracking with Vision-Language-Action Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.22846/) (2026)
- [UrbanVLA: A Vision-Language-Action Model for Urban Micromobility](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.23576/) (2025)
- [Structured Observation Language for Efficient and Generalizable Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.27577/) (2026)
- [AttenA+: Rectifying Action Inequality in Robotic Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13548/) (2026)
- [P3: Toward Versatile Embodied Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07033/) (2025)
- [LiteViLNet: Lightweight Vision-LiDAR Fusion Network for Efficient Road Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.21007/) (2026)
- [SSTG-Nav: Metric-Grounded Spatial-Semantic Topological Graphs for Reusable Object Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.00527/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Object navigation in open-world environments remains a formidable and pervasive challenge for robotic systems, particularly when it comes to executing long-horizon tasks that require both open-world object detection and high-level task planning. Traditional methods often struggle to integrate these components effectively, and this limits their capability to deal with complex, long-range navigation missions. In this paper, we propose LOVON, a novel framework that integrates large language models (LLMs) for hierarchical task planning with open-vocabulary visual detection models, tailored for effective long-range object navigation in dynamic, unstructured environments. To tackle real-world challenges including visual jittering, blind zones, and temporary target loss, we design dedicated solutions such as Laplacian Variance Filtering for visual stabilization. We also develop a functional execution logic for the robot that guarantees LOVON's capabilities in autonomous navigation, task adaptation, and robust task completion. Extensive evaluations demonstrate the successful completion of long-sequence tasks involving real-time detection, search, and navigation toward open-vocabulary dynamic targets. Furthermore, real-world experiments across different legged robots (Unitree Go2, B2, and H1-2) showcase the compatibility and appealing plug-and-play feature of LOVON.