ESCAPE: Episodic Spatial Memory and Adaptive Execution Policy for Long-Horizon Mobile Manipulation

arXiv cs.CV / 4/16/2026

📰 NewsSignals & Early TrendsIdeas & Deep AnalysisModels & Research

Key Points

  • The paper introduces ESCAPE, an approach for long-horizon mobile manipulation that jointly addresses navigation and manipulation failures common in existing embodied AI methods.
  • ESCAPE builds a persistent 3D spatial memory using a spatio-temporal fusion mapping module and generates interaction masks via a memory-driven target grounding module.
  • It uses an adaptive execution policy that switches between proactive global navigation and reactive local manipulation to capture opportunistic targets over extended task horizons.
  • ESCAPE reports state-of-the-art results on the ALFRED benchmark, with success rates of 65.09% (test seen) and 60.79% (test unseen) when following step-by-step instructions.
  • The method also shows strong robustness with reduced redundant exploration, achieving 61.24% / 56.04% success without detailed guidance for long-horizon tasks.

Abstract

Coordinating navigation and manipulation with robust performance is essential for embodied AI in complex indoor environments. However, as tasks extend over long horizons, existing methods often struggle due to catastrophic forgetting, spatial inconsistency, and rigid execution. To address these issues, we propose ESCAPE (Episodic Spatial Memory Coupled with an Adaptive Policy for Execution), operating through a tightly coupled perception-grounding-execution workflow. For robust perception, ESCAPE features a Spatio-Temporal Fusion Mapping module to autoregressively construct a depth-free, persistent 3D spatial memory, alongside a Memory-Driven Target Grounding module for precise interaction mask generation. To achieve flexible action, our Adaptive Execution Policy dynamically orchestrates proactive global navigation and reactive local manipulation to seize opportunistic targets. ESCAPE achieves state-of-the-art performance on the ALFRED benchmark, reaching 65.09% and 60.79% success rates in test seen and unseen environments with step-by-step instructions. By reducing redundant exploration, our ESCAPE attains substantial improvements in path-length-weighted metrics and maintains robust performance (61.24% / 56.04%) even without detailed guidance for long-horizon tasks.