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superxslam/supermap

Analysis updated 2026-05-18

111Audience · researcherComplexity · 5/5Setup · hard

TLDR

A CMU research project describing a persistent spatial memory system for robots that fuses SLAM with open-vocabulary object perception, code has not been released yet.

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((SuperMap))
    What it does
      Spatial memory
      4D scene graph
      Tracks change over time
    Tech stack
      Python
      ROS2
      CUDA
    Use cases
      Robot navigation
      Long horizon reasoning
    Audience
      Robotics researchers
    Status
      Code not released yet
      RSS 2026 paper

Code map

Detail Auto

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What do people build with it?

USE CASE 1

Let a robot navigate using natural-language instructions grounded in its spatial memory.

USE CASE 2

Build a persistent semantic map of an environment for long-horizon robot reasoning.

USE CASE 3

Test object-recognition-based mapping using detectors like Grounding DINO or YOLOE.

What is it built with?

PythonPyTorchROS2CUDA

How does it compare?

superxslam/supermap2417467487-hub/trend2video-proborexola/neolink.net
Stars111111111
LanguagePythonC#
Setup difficultyhardmoderatemoderate
Complexity5/53/5
Audienceresearchervibe coderops devops

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

How do you get it running?

Difficulty · hard Time to first run · 1day+

Code is not released yet, once available it needs an NVIDIA GPU with 16GB+ VRAM and ROS2 for live use.

In plain English

SuperMap is a research project from AirLab at Carnegie Mellon University, presented at the Robotics: Science and Systems conference in 2026. It describes itself as a living spatial memory for embodied AI: a system that lets a robot perceive its surroundings, remember how the space changes over time, and use that memory to reason about actions. Under the hood, it is a training-free system that builds a persistent map by combining fast geometric SLAM, the technique robots use to build a map while tracking their own position, with slower, open-vocabulary perception that can recognize a wide range of objects without being retrained. The result is described as a 4D scene graph, meaning the map stores information about where objects are and how their state has changed across time, not just a static snapshot. The project claims the memory supports both visual-language navigation, where a robot follows instructions given in plain language, and longer-horizon reasoning tasks. It says the system works with different object detectors such as Grounding DINO and YOLOE, can run fully offline on recorded data or live on a robot through ROS2, and has been tested continuously for two hours across the CMU campus. As of this README, the code itself has not been released yet. The authors state it will be published after the RSS conference, so right now this repository mainly serves as a project page, paper link, and demo video, plus a citation entry for anyone referencing the work. Running it, once released, is expected to need an Ubuntu machine with an NVIDIA GPU with at least 16 gigabytes of memory and Python 3.10 or newer, plus a ROS2 setup for live use on real hardware. There is a Discord server for questions in the meantime.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1
Explain how SuperMap's 4D scene graph differs from a standard SLAM map.
Prompt 2
Summarize the setup steps for running SuperMap's offline example once the code is released.
Prompt 3
Walk me through how SuperMap fuses geometric SLAM with open-vocabulary perception.

Frequently asked questions

What is supermap?

A CMU research project describing a persistent spatial memory system for robots that fuses SLAM with open-vocabulary object perception, code has not been released yet.

How hard is supermap to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated hard, with roughly 1day+ to a first successful run.

Who is supermap for?

Mainly researcher.

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