DM³-Nav self-reports: decentralized multi-robot semantic navigation matches or beats centralized baselines
A Northeastern University team self-reports that DM³-Nav needs no central coordinator or shared global state, matching or beating centralized and shared-map baselines on HM3Dv0.2 and GOAT-Bench, with a two-robot office deployment demo.
ImportanceLocalEvidenceE2 unreplicated
Multiple robots can perform semantic navigation without a central coordinator or shared global state, relying only on pairwise ad hoc communication to exchange local maps and navigation intents, and the team deployed it on two robots with onboard perception in an office — a result self-reported by a Northeastern University team in DM³-Nav.
Multi-robot semantic navigation previously typically relied on a central coordinator and shared global state; the costs of centralized approaches in communication and scalability are what this work tries to avoid.
The authors self-report that on the HM3Dv0.2 and GOAT-Bench benchmarks, the method matches or exceeds centralized and shared-map baselines; the measurement was done first-party by the Northeastern University team.
The results have no independent verification; the preprint was first submitted on April 23, revised to v3 on September 16, and arXiv lists it as accepted to IROS 2026 (arXiv:2604.22014).