A Multimodal Depth-Aware Method for Embodied Reference Understanding

Embodied Reference Understanding requires identifying a target object in a visual scene based on both language instructions and pointing cues. While prior works have shown progress in open-vocabulary object detection, they often fail in ambiguous scenarios where multiple candidate objects exist in the scene. To address these challenges, we propose a novel ERU framework that jointly leverages LLM-based data augmentation, depth-map modality, and a depth-aware decision module. This design enables robust integration of linguistic and embodied cues, improving disambiguation in complex or cluttered environments. Experimental results on two datasets demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms existing baselines, achieving more accurate and reliable referent detection.

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Publication Details

Published
2026-04-21
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/icassp55912.2026.11463262
Primary Topic
Multimodal Machine Learning Applications
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

A Multimodal Depth-Aware Method for Embodied Reference Understanding

Fevziye İrem Eyiokur, Hazım Kemal Ekenel, Alexander Waibel, Doğucan Yaman
Multimodal Machine Learning Applications
article

A Multimodal Depth-Aware Method for Embodied Reference Understanding

Fevziye İrem Eyiokur, Hazım Kemal Ekenel, Alexander Waibel, Doğucan Yaman
article en

Abstract

Embodied Reference Understanding requires identifying a target object in a visual scene based on both language instructions and pointing cues. While prior works have shown progress in open-vocabulary object detection, they often fail in ambiguous scenarios where multiple candidate objects exist in the scene. To address these challenges, we propose a novel ERU framework that jointly leverages LLM-based data augmentation, depth-map modality, and a depth-aware decision module. This design enables robust integration of linguistic and embodied cues, improving disambiguation in complex or cluttered environments. Experimental results on two datasets demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms existing baselines, achieving more accurate and reliable referent detection.

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (DE), Istanbul Technical University (TR)
European Commission
Openalex Percentile: Top 99%
Multimodal Machine Learning Applications
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