# LHRS-Bot-Nova: Improved Multimodal Large Language Model for Remote Sensing Vision-Language Interpretation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.09301 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.09301/

## Key facts

- Cited by 25 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Embodied and 3D vision-language models, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 41 of its 96 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 14 Nov 2024.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Embodied and 3D vision-language models](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/embodied-and-3d-vision-language-models/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Llama 2: Open Foundation and Fine-Tuned Chat Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09288/) (2023)
- [Sigmoid Loss for Language Image Pre-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15343/) (2023)
- [InstructBLIP: Towards General-purpose Vision-Language Models with Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06500/) (2023)
- [LLaVA-OneVision: Easy Visual Task Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03326/) (2024)
- [A Survey of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.18223/) (2023)
- [Qwen-VL: A Versatile Vision-Language Model for Understanding, Localization, Text Reading, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12966/) (2023)
- [MMBench: Is Your Multi-modal Model an All-around Player?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06281/) (2023)
- [Mixtral of Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.04088/) (2024)
- [Evaluating Object Hallucination in Large Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10355/) (2023)
- [Transformer Feed-Forward Layers Are Key-Value Memories](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.14913/) (2020)
- [Token Merging: Your ViT But Faster](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09461/) (2022)
- [ShareGPT4V: Improving Large Multi-Modal Models with Better Captions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12793/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Multimodal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.13549/) (2023)
- [Gemini: A Family of Highly Capable Multimodal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.11805/) (2023)
- [Cambrian-1: A Fully Open, Vision-Centric Exploration of Multimodal LLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16860/) (2024)
- [MiniGPT-v2: large language model as a unified interface for vision-language multi-task learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.09478/) (2023)
- [Instruction Tuning for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.10792/) (2023)
- [Hallucination of Multimodal Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.18930/) (2024)
- [Long-CLIP: Unlocking the Long-Text Capability of CLIP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15378/) (2024)
- [InternLM-XComposer: A Vision-Language Large Model for Advanced Text-image Comprehension and Composition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15112/) (2023)
- [Demystifying CLIP Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16671/) (2023)
- [RSGPT: A Remote Sensing Vision Language Model and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15266/) (2023)
- [RS5M and GeoRSCLIP: A Large Scale Vision-Language Dataset and A Large Vision-Language Model for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11300/) (2023)
- [LHRS-Bot: Empowering Remote Sensing with VGI-Enhanced Large Multimodal Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02544/) (2024)
- [SkyEyeGPT: Unifying Remote Sensing Vision-Language Tasks via Instruction Tuning with Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09712/) (2024)
- [Neural Plasticity-Inspired Multimodal Foundation Model for Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15356/) (2024)
- [SkySenseGPT: A Fine-Grained Instruction Tuning Dataset and Model for Remote Sensing Vision-Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.10100/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [CHOICE: Benchmarking the Remote Sensing Capabilities of Large Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18145/) (2024)
- [Scaling and Beyond: Advancing Spatial Reasoning in MLLMs Requires New Recipes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.15037/) (2025)
- [GeoZero: Incentivizing Reasoning from Scratch on Geospatial Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22645/) (2025)
- [Foundation Models in Remote Sensing: Evolving from Unimodality to Multimodality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00988/) (2026)
- [Quality-Driven Curation of Remote Sensing Vision-Language Data via Learned Scoring Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00743/) (2025)
- [SegEarth-R2: Towards Comprehensive Language-guided Segmentation for Remote Sensing Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.20013/) (2025)
- [GeoEyes: On-Demand Visual Focusing for Evidence-Grounded Understanding of Ultra-High-Resolution Remote Sensing Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14201/) (2026)
- [TinyRS-R1: Compact Multimodal Language Model for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12099/) (2025)
- [Few-Shot Vision-Language Reasoning for Satellite Imagery via Verifiable Rewards](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21745/) (2025)
- [Co-Training Vision Language Models for Remote Sensing Multi-task Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.21272/) (2025)
- [OmniEarth: A Benchmark for Evaluating Vision-Language Models in Geospatial Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.09471/) (2026)
- [OSMDA: OpenStreetMap-based Domain Adaptation for Remote Sensing VLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.11804/) (2026)
- [Remote Sensing Large Vision-Language Model: Semantic-augmented Multi-level Alignment and Semantic-aware Expert Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.21863/) (2025)
- [Agentic AI for Remote Sensing: Technical Challenges and Research Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.24919/) (2026)
- [Chain-of-Talkers (CoTalk): Fast Human Annotation of Dense Image Captions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22627/) (2025)
- [FarSLIP: Discovering Effective CLIP Adaptation for Fine-Grained Remote Sensing Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14901/) (2025)
- [RSHallu: Dual-Mode Hallucination Evaluation for Remote-Sensing Multimodal Large Language Models with Domain-Tailored Mitigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.10799/) (2026)
- [Semantic-Geometric Dual Compression: Training-Free Visual Token Reduction for Ultra-High-Resolution Remote Sensing Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.11122/) (2026)
- [Beyond Zooming: Learning Multi-Tool Visual Reasoning for Ultra-High-Resolution Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.25993/) (2026)
- [YOLO with Kolmogorov-Arnold networks and vision-language foundation models for interpretable object detection with trustworthy multimodal AI in computer vision perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23037/) (2026)
- [SenseBench: A Benchmark for Remote Sensing Low-Level Visual Perception and Description in Large Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10576/) (2026)
- [ForestHG-Trace: Traceable Long-Horizon Ecological Reasoning over Large-Scale Forest Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.27590/) (2026)
- [More with Less: a Large Scale Remote Sensing VLM with a Simple Recipe](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.15942/) (2026)
- [Filling Before Advancing: Capability-Gap-Driven Post-Training for Scenario-Specialized Remote Sensing MLLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.22205/) (2026)
- [WeaveAgent: A Two-Stage Tool-Routing Agent for Ultra-High-Resolution Remote Sensing Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31234/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Automatically and rapidly understanding Earth's surface is fundamental to our grasp of the living environment and informed decision-making. This underscores the need for a unified system with comprehensive capabilities in analyzing Earth's surface to address a wide range of human needs. The emergence of multimodal large language models (MLLMs) has great potential in boosting the efficiency and convenience of intelligent Earth observation. These models can engage in human-like conversations, serve as unified platforms for understanding images, follow diverse instructions, and provide insightful feedbacks. In this study, we introduce LHRS-Bot-Nova, an MLLM specialized in understanding remote sensing (RS) images, designed to expertly perform a wide range of RS understanding tasks aligned with human instructions. LHRS-Bot-Nova features an enhanced vision encoder and a novel bridge layer, enabling efficient visual compression and better language-vision alignment. To further enhance RS-oriented vision-language alignment, we propose a large-scale RS image-caption dataset, generated through feature-guided image recaptioning. Additionally, we introduce an instruction dataset specifically designed to improve spatial recognition abilities. Extensive experiments demonstrate superior performance of LHRS-Bot-Nova across various RS image understanding tasks. We also evaluate different MLLM performances in complex RS perception and instruction following using a complicated multi-choice question evaluation benchmark, providing a reliable guide for future model selection and improvement. Data, code, and models will be available at https://github.com/NJU-LHRS/LHRS-Bot.
