Two-Stage Multi-modal Learning for Dynamic Audio-Visual Navigation: From Physical Alignment to Scene Aggregation

arXiv:2610.14077v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Embodied Audio-Visual Navigation (AVN) requires an agent to locate sound targets by jointly leveraging visual and auditory cues. While prior work has achieved notable success with static sound sources, real-world scenarios often involve moving targets, giving rise to the more challenging problem of \textbf{Dynamic Audio-Visual Navigation (D-AVN)}. Existing approaches largely rely on semantic auditory features, which limits generalization to unheard sound categories and hinders fine-grained spatial reasoning. To address these challenges, we propose a novel \textbf{Two-Stage Multi-modal Learning} framework for D-AVN. In the Physical Alignment stage, the proposed \textbf{Intensity-Calibrated Geometry Encoder (ICGE)} performs physics-informed alignment of sound intensity with visual geometry to capture category-agnostic spatial correspondence. In the Scene Aggregation stage, a Transformer-based \textbf{Cross-Modal Scene Aggregator (CMSA)} dynamically integrates multi-modal features to construct a robust state representation for policy learning. Extensive experiments on Replica and Matterport3D demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art success rates, while significantly improving generalization and navigation efficiency in complex environments and under unheard sound scenarios.

Abstract:Embodied Audio-Visual Navigation (AVN) requires an agent to locate sound targets by jointly leveraging visual and auditory cues. While prior work has achieved notable success with static sound sources, real-world scenarios often involve moving targets, giving rise to the more challenging problem of \textbf{Dynamic Audio-Visual Navigation (D-AVN)}. Existing approaches largely rely on semantic auditory features, which limits generalization to unheard sound categories and hinders fine-grained spatial reasoning. To address these challenges, we propose a novel \textbf{Two-Stage Multi-modal Learning} framework for D-AVN. In the Physical Alignment stage, the proposed \textbf{Intensity-Calibrated Geometry Encoder (ICGE)} performs physics-informed alignment of sound intensity with visual geometry to capture category-agnostic spatial correspondence. In the Scene Aggregation stage, a Transformer-based \textbf{Cross-Modal Scene Aggregator (CMSA)} dynamically integrates multi-modal features to construct a robust state representation for policy learning. Extensive experiments on Replica and Matterport3D demonstrate that our method achieves state-of-the-art success rates, while significantly improving generalization and navigation efficiency in complex environments and under unheard sound scenarios.

Main paper (10 pages). Accepted for publication by IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing(TASLP 2026)

Sound (cs.SD); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Robotics (cs.RO); Audio and Speech Processing (eess.AS); Signal Processing (eess.SP)

arXiv:2610.14077 [cs.SD]

(or arXiv:2610.14077v1 [cs.SD] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2610.14077 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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Two-Stage Multi-modal Learning for Dynamic Audio-Visual Navigation: From Physical Alignment to Scene Aggregation

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