{"ID":2869697,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13720","arxiv_id":"2509.13720","title":"EZREAL: Enhancing Zero-Shot Outdoor Robot Navigation toward Distant Targets under Varying Visibility","abstract":"Zero-shot object navigation (ZSON) in large-scale outdoor environments faces many challenges; we specifically address a coupled one: long-range targets that reduce to tiny projections and intermittent visibility due to partial or complete occlusion. We present a unified, lightweight closed-loop system built on an aligned multi-scale image tile hierarchy. Through hierarchical target-saliency fusion, it summarizes localized semantic contrast into a stable coarse-layer regional saliency that provides the target direction and indicates target visibility. This regional saliency supports visibility-aware heading maintenance through keyframe memory, saliency-weighted fusion of historical headings, and active search during temporary invisibility. The system avoids whole-image rescaling, enables deterministic bottom-up aggregation, supports zero-shot navigation, and runs efficiently on a mobile robot. Across simulation and real-world outdoor trials, the system detects semantic targets beyond 150m, maintains a correct heading through visibility changes with 82.6% probability, and improves overall task success by 17.5% compared with the SOTA methods, demonstrating robust ZSON toward distant and intermittently observable targets.","short_abstract":"Zero-shot object navigation (ZSON) in large-scale outdoor environments faces many challenges; we specifically address a coupled one: long-range targets that reduce to tiny projections and intermittent visibility due to partial or complete occlusion. We present a unified, lightweight closed-loop system built on an align...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.13720","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.13720v1","authors":"[\"Tianle Zeng\",\"Jianwei Peng\",\"Hanjing Ye\",\"Guangcheng Chen\",\"Senzi Luo\",\"Hong Zhang\"]","published":"2025-09-17T06:15:06Z","proceeding":"cs.RO","tasks":"[\"cs.RO\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}