John Abanes

Papers

Total Citations

H-Index

About

John Abanes is a leading researcher in embodied artificial intelligence and autonomous navigation, with a particular focus on enabling machines to perceive and move through complex, unstructured urban environments. His most notable contribution, the landmark paper "CityWalker: Learning Embodied Urban Navigation from Web-Scale Videos" (2025), addresses a critical bottleneck in robotics: the inability of current visual navigation systems to operate without pre-built maps or in off-street settings. By leveraging web-scale video data, Abanes pioneered a novel approach that allows embodied agents to learn common-sense spatial reasoning and dynamic obstacle avoidance directly from real-world footage, dramatically improving their adaptability in crowded, map-free scenarios. This work has already garnered 4 citations since its publication, signaling its immediate impact on the field. Abanes’ research bridges the gap between computer vision and robotics, offering a scalable path toward truly autonomous urban agents—from delivery drones to assistive robots—capable of navigating the unpredictable, norm-driven spaces where people live and work.