---
title: "Representation Learning for Grounded Spatial Reasoning (2018)"
description: "The authors study this in simulated 2D grid worlds where an agent is rewarded only when it reaches… 32 references, cited by 21 papers here."
authors: ["Michael Janner", "Karthik Narasimhan", "Regina Barzilay"]
year: 2018
venue: "Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics"
source: "https://aclanthology.org/Q18-1004/"
doi: "10.1162/tacl_a_00004"
licence: "CC BY 4.0 (ACL Anthology)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/janner-2018-representation-learning-grounded-spatial-reasoning/"
---
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# Representation Learning for Grounded Spatial Reasoning

**Authors:** Michael Janner, [Karthik Narasimhan](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/karthik-narasimhan/) and [Regina Barzilay](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/regina-barzilay/) · **Year:** 2018 · **Venue:** [Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/tacl/) ([Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics (TACL) 2018](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/tacl/2018/)) · **Publisher:** [The MIT Press](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/the-mit-press/) · **Licence:** [CC BY 4.0 (ACL Anthology)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/Q18-1004/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/Q18-1004.pdf) · [DOI 10.1162/tacl\_a\_00004](https://doi.org/10.1162/tacl_a_00004) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W2734458248)

**Citations:** 49 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) · [21](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/janner-2018-representation-learning-grounded-spatial-reasoning/cited-by/) in our library, of the 149,439 papers whose bibliographies we read

## Summary

Spatial expressions in instructions only make sense relative to a particular environment, so a system must reason over language and map layout together. The authors study this in simulated 2D grid worlds where an agent is rewarded only when it reaches the place an instruction describes. It receives no demonstrations, object mappings or spatial ontology. Their model encodes the instruction with an LSTM and splits the resulting vector into two parts. One part serves as a convolution kernel over learned state embeddings, tying words to local neighborhoods. The other part weights gradient functions to capture map-wide references such as superlatives. A CNN merges both outputs into a predicted value map, trained by reinforcement learning with a generalized value iteration scheme. The authors also release Puddle World Navigation, a dataset of more than 3,300 tasks on 200 maps with crowdsourced instructions. Against adapted versions of UVFA and the Misra et al. (2017) architecture, the model cuts goal-localization error by 45% and transfers well to unseen layouts. This is relevant to robot navigation and human–robot communication.

## Key points

- **New dataset:** Puddle World Navigation contains 3,300+ tasks over 200 maps, with instructions collected via Mechanical Turk. Code and data are on GitHub (JannerM/spatial-reasoning).
- **Instruction types:** Instructions refer to a single entity, one referent or several referents. Each type can use local relations (e.g., "above") or global ones (e.g., "easternmost").
- **Main result:** Manhattan distance error is 45% lower than the strongest baseline. The model reaches 0.90 policy quality on local instructions after only 400 training samples.
- **Bisk et al.'s (2016) ISI benchmark for grounding language:** The task was adapted with an oracle choosing the moving block and a 13 × 13 grid. Here the model scores 0.74 policy quality and 3.94 distance, versus 0.17/4.11 for CNN + LSTM and 0.15/4.61 for UVFA (text).
- **Weaknesses and side finding:** Instructions with multiple levels of indirection and long, redundant instructions remain hard. On ISI, subgoals that come later in a task are predicted more accurately, which suggests language matters less once the structure is mostly built.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

## Institutions

- [Massachusetts Institute of Technology](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/massachusetts-institute-of-technology/) — University, Cambridge, United States · 211 works · 69,000 citations
- [MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/mit-computer-science-and-artificial-intelligence-laboratory/) — Research institute, Cambridge, United States · 69 works · 30,953 citations

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🧭 Topics (1): [🧮 Reasoning](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/reasoning/) · 1,426 works

## Cite

Cite as: Michael Janner, Karthik Narasimhan and Regina Barzilay. 2018. Representation Learning for Grounded Spatial Reasoning. Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@article{janner2018representation,
  title = {{Representation Learning for Grounded Spatial Reasoning}},
  author = {Michael Janner, Karthik Narasimhan and Regina Barzilay},
  journal = {Transactions of the Association for Computational Linguistics},
  year = {2018},
  doi = {10.1162/tacl\_a\_00004},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1162/tacl_a_00004}
}
```

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*Updated 31 October 2026*