Vision to Geometry: 3D Spatial Memory for Sequential Embodied MLLM Reasoning and Exploration
On the map: LLM reasoning → Spatial and embodied reasoning
Abstract (arXiv)
Embodied agents are expected to assist humans by actively exploring unknown environments and reasoning about spatial contexts. When deployed in real life, agents often face sequential tasks where each new task follows the completion of the previous one and may include infeasible objectives, such as searching for non-existent objects. However, most existing research focuses on isolated goals, overlooking the core challenge of sequential tasks: the ability to reuse spatial knowledge accumulated from previous explorations to guide subsequent reasoning and exploration. In this work, we investigate this underexplored yet practically significant embodied AI challenge. Specifically, we propose 3DSPMR, a 3D SPatial Memory Reasoning framework that utilizes Field-of-View (FoV) coverage as an explicit geometric prior. By integrating FoV-based constraints, 3DSPMR significantly enhances an agent's memory, reasoning, and exploration capabilities across sequential tasks. To facilitate research in this area, we further introduce SEER-Bench, a novel Sequential Embodied Exploration and Reasoning Benchmark that spans two foundational tasks: Embodied Question Answering (EQA) and Embodied Multi-modal Navigation (EMN). SEER-Bench uniquely incorporates both feasible and infeasible tasks to provide a rigorous and comprehensive evaluation of agent performance. Extensive experiments verify that 3DSPMR achieves substantial performance gains on both sequential EQA and EMN tasks.
Key facts. Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 13 Oct 2026). Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 49 of its 52 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Dec 2025.
Builds on
49 of 52 references.
Closest ancestors · 9
Same direction, newest first
- 2025IndustryEQA: Pushing the Frontiers of Embodied Question Answering in Industrial Scenarios27 May
- 2025Aux-Think: Exploring Reasoning Strategies for Data-Efficient Vision-Language Navigation17 May
- 2025Why Is Spatial Reasoning Hard for VLMs? An Attention Mechanism Perspective on Focus Areas3 Mar
- 2025VL-Nav: Neuro-Symbolic Reasoning-based Vision-Language Navigation2 Feb
- 2024Thinking in Space: How Multimodal Large Language Models See, Remember, and Recall Spaces18 Dec
- 2024End-to-End Navigation with Vision Language Models: Transforming Spatial Reasoning into Question-Answering8 Nov
- 2024Multi-modal Situated Reasoning in 3D Scenes4 Sep
- 2023NavGPT: Explicit Reasoning in Vision-and-Language Navigation with Large Language Models26 May
- 2023EmbodiedGPT: Vision-Language Pre-Training via Embodied Chain of Thought24 May
Other references · 40
- 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,588
- 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,510
- 2023Segment Anythingcited by 8,195
- 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,499
- 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,536
- 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,714
- 2023RT-2: Vision-Language-Action Models Transfer Web Knowledge to Robotic Controlcited by 3,022
- 2024LLaVA-OneVision: Easy Visual Task Transfercited by 2,692
- 2018On Evaluation of Embodied Navigation Agentscited by 531
- 2021Habitat 2.0: Training Home Assistants to Rearrange their Habitatcited by 503
- 2024YOLO-World: Real-Time Open-Vocabulary Object Detectioncited by 500
- 2023ConceptGraphs: Open-Vocabulary 3D Scene Graphs for Perception and Planningcited by 359
28 more
- 2017Embodied Question Answeringcited by 335
- 2020ObjectNav Revisited: On Evaluation of Embodied Agents Navigating to Objectscited by 240
- 2024Hierarchical Open-Vocabulary 3D Scene Graphs for Language-Grounded Robot Navigationcited by 195
- 2023LLaVA-Plus: Learning to Use Tools for Creating Multimodal Agentscited by 191
- 2020RoboTHOR: An Open Simulation-to-Real Embodied AI Platformcited by 190
- 2022Hydra: A Real-time Spatial Perception System for 3D Scene Graph Construction and Optimizationcited by 176
- 2017IQA: Visual Question Answering in Interactive Environmentscited by 154
- 2024InstructNav: Zero-shot System for Generic Instruction Navigation in Unexplored Environmentcited by 152
- 2023Towards Learning a Generalist Model for Embodied Navigationcited by 136
- 2022Habitat-Matterport 3D Semantics Datasetcited by 109
- 2024SG-Nav: Online 3D Scene Graph Prompting for LLM-based Zero-shot Object Navigationcited by 106
- 2019Embodied Question Answering in Photorealistic Environments with Point Cloud Perceptioncited by 103
- 2024GOAT-Bench: A Benchmark for Multi-Modal Lifelong Navigationcited by 93
- 2023GOAT: GO to Any Thingcited by 89
- 2019Multi-Target Embodied Question Answeringcited by 74
- 2024Explore until Confident: Efficient Exploration for Embodied Question Answeringcited by 74
- 20243D-Mem: 3D Scene Memory for Embodied Exploration and Reasoningcited by 74
- 2024HM3D-OVON: A Dataset and Benchmark for Open-Vocabulary Object Goal Navigationcited by 71
- 2024Towards Long-Horizon Vision-Language Navigation: Platform, Benchmark and Methodcited by 66
- 2023Embodied Multi-Modal Agent trained by an LLM from a Parallel TextWorldcited by 65
- 2024Volumetric Environment Representation for Vision-Language Navigationcited by 63
- 2023Foundations of Spatial Perception for Robotics: Hierarchical Representations and Real-time Systemscited by 60
- 2025UniGoal: Towards Universal Zero-shot Goal-oriented Navigationcited by 56
- 20223D-Aware Object Goal Navigation via Simultaneous Exploration and Identificationcited by 46
- 2024GraphEQA: Using 3D Semantic Scene Graphs for Real-time Embodied Question Answeringcited by 37
- 2025CityEQA: A Hierarchical LLM Agent on Embodied Question Answering Benchmark in City Spacecited by 31
- 2025Beyond the Destination: A Novel Benchmark for Exploration-Aware Embodied Question Answeringcited by 29
- 2025ECBench: Can Multi-modal Foundation Models Understand the Egocentric World? A Holistic Embodied Cognition Benchmarkcited by 19
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 5.
5 papers.
- 2026SpaMEM: Benchmarking Dynamic Spatial Reasoning via Perception-Memory Integration in Embodied Environmentscited by 6
- 2026ObsGraph: Hierarchical Observation Representation for Embodied Reasoning and Explorationcited by 1
- 2026LongSpace: Exploring Long-Horizon Spatial Memory from Perception to Recall in Videocited by 0
- 2026What Spatial Memory Must Store: Occlusion as the Test for Language-Agent Memorycited by 0
- 2026Finder: Agentic Closed-Loop Object Finding for Embodied Groundingcited by 0
- 2026Finder: Agentic Closed-Loop Object Finding for Embodied Grounding16 Sep 2026
- 2026ObsGraph: Hierarchical Observation Representation for Embodied Reasoning and Exploration23 Jun 2026
- 2026What Spatial Memory Must Store: Occlusion as the Test for Language-Agent Memory9 Jun 2026
- 2026LongSpace: Exploring Long-Horizon Spatial Memory from Perception to Recall in Video4 Jun 2026
- 2026SpaMEM: Benchmarking Dynamic Spatial Reasoning via Perception-Memory Integration in Embodied Environments24 Apr 2026
Similar, not cited
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- 2026RenderMem: Rendering as Spatial Memory Retrieval
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- 2026GSMem: 3D Gaussian Splatting as Persistent Spatial Memory for Zero-Shot Embodied Exploration and Reasoning
- 2025Multimodal Spatial Reasoning in the Large Model Era: A Survey and Benchmarks
- 2026VCN-Bench: A Video-Contextualized Navigation Benchmark for Spatial Reasoning over Prior Visual Experience
- 20253DLLM-Mem: Long-Term Spatial-Temporal Memory for Embodied 3D Large Language Model
- 2025FindingDory: A Benchmark to Evaluate Memory in Embodied Agents
- 2025Spatial Understanding from Videos: Structured Prompts Meet Simulation Data