Strategic Transformer for Resource-Constrained Multi-Object Navigation in Ultra-Large-Scale Environments
TL;DR
The Strategic Transformer is developed, providing an optimization framework under resource constraints where exploitation is governed by the SOP model and exploration is managed by a separate heuristic switcher and establishing a new benchmark for scalable, resource-constrained navigation.
Abstract
Resource-constrained multi-object navigation in vast indoor environments ($>2,000\text{ m}^2$) poses significant challenges for efficiency and strategic planning. To tackle this, we reformulate the task as a Set Orienteering Problem (SOP), providing an optimization framework under resource constraints where exploitation is governed by the SOP model and exploration is managed by a separate heuristic switcher. Conventional baselines suffer from either rigid planning or myopic behaviors. To overcome these limitations and resolve the NP-hard computational challenges of SOP for real-time navigation, we develop the Strategic Transformer. This lightweight architecture functions as a priority planner that internalizes expert combinatorial logic into a predictable $41.03\text{ ms}$ forward pass while reducing teacher-student information asymmetry. Incorporating geometric attention biases allows the network to effectively model long-range structural dependencies. By coupling the Transformer's macro-plan with a bounded iterative 2-opt local refinement on a capped candidate graph, our framework achieves a $94\times$ speedup compared to heavy meta-heuristics, ensuring bounded-latency inference suitable for onboard deployment. Experiments on ProcTHOR validate that our method successfully bridges the gap between exploration and exploitation, outperforming carefully re-implemented baselines under Progress weighted by Path Length (PPL) and establishing a new benchmark for scalable, resource-constrained navigation.