# Vision-Language Models for Edge Networks: A Comprehensive Survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.07855 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07855/

## Key facts

- Cited by 29 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Visual token pruning and efficiency, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 113 of its 205 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Feb 2025.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Visual token pruning and efficiency](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/visual-token-pruning-and-efficiency/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 113)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09685/) (2021)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01507/) (2017)
- [Parameter-Efficient Transfer Learning for NLP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00751/) (2019)
- [MobileNets: Efficient Convolutional Neural Networks for Mobile Vision Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.04861/) (2017)
- [The Power of Scale for Parameter-Efficient Prompt Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08691/) (2021)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04977/) (2019)
- [InstructBLIP: Towards General-purpose Vision-Language Models with Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06500/) (2023)
- [Deep Compression: Compressing Deep Neural Networks with Pruning, Trained Quantization and Huffman Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.00149/) (2015)
- [Learning to Prompt for Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01134/) (2021)
- [ViLBERT: Pretraining Task-Agnostic Visiolinguistic Representations for Vision-and-Language Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.02265/) (2019)
- [Searching for MobileNetV3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02244/) (2019)
- [Quantization and Training of Neural Networks for Efficient Integer-Arithmetic-Only Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.05877/) (2017)
- [LXMERT: Learning Cross-Modality Encoder Representations from Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07490/) (2019)
- [Conditional Prompt Learning for Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.05557/) (2022)
- [VisualBERT: A Simple and Performant Baseline for Vision and Language](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.03557/) (2019)
- [ViLT: Vision-and-Language Transformer Without Convolution or Region Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.03334/) (2021)
- [Oscar: Object-Semantics Aligned Pre-training for Vision-Language Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.06165/) (2020)
- [EfficientNetV2: Smaller Models and Faster Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00298/) (2021)
- [CLIP-Adapter: Better Vision-Language Models with Feature Adapters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04544/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [Vision-Language-Action (VLA) Models: Concepts, Progress, Applications and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04769/) (2025)
- [Generative Diffusion Models for Wireless Networks: Fundamental, Architecture, and State-of-the-Art](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.16733/) (2025)
- [Object Detection with Multimodal Large Vision-Language Models: An In-depth Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.19294/) (2025)
- [Masking Teacher and Reinforcing Student for Distilling Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.22238/) (2025)
- [Limits and Gains of Test-Time Scaling in Vision-Language Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11109/) (2025)
- [ECVL-ROUTER: Scenario-Aware Routing for Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.27256/) (2025)
- [Focus: A Streaming Concentration Architecture for Efficient Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14661/) (2025)
- [Efficient Onboard Vision-Language Inference in UAV-Enabled Low-Altitude Economy Networks via LLM-Enhanced Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10028/) (2025)
- [Lingua-SafetyBench: A Benchmark for Safety Evaluation of Multilingual Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22737/) (2026)
- [ZAYA1-VL-8B Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.08560/) (2026)
- [MemoVAD: Resource-Efficient Video Anomaly Detection via Dynamic Semantic Memory in Edge Computing Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.07669/) (2026)
- [From the Laboratory to Real-World Application: Evaluating Zero-Shot Scene Interpretation on Edge Devices for Mobile Robotics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.02427/) (2025)
- [Collaborative Edge-to-Server Inference for Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.16349/) (2025)
- [Vision-Language Models on the Edge for Real-Time Robotic Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.14921/) (2026)
- [Synthesizing the Kill Chain: A Zero-Shot Framework for Target Verification and Tactical Reasoning on the Edge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13324/) (2026)
- [One Layer's Trash is Another Layer's Treasure: Adaptive Layer-wise Visual Token Selection in LVLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.14277/) (2026)
- [Rethinking Small VLM Quantization: From Component-Wise Analysis to Hardware-Aware Edge Deployment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.08029/) (2026)
- [Hierarchy-Aware Fine-Tuning of Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.21529/) (2025)
- [Lightweight Transformer Architectures for Edge Devices in Real-Time Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.03290/) (2026)
- [Efficient Few-Shot Learning for Edge AI via Knowledge Distillation on MobileViT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26145/) (2026)
- [Entropy and Attention Dynamics in Small Language Models: A Trace-Level Structural Analysis on the TruthfulQA Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03589/) (2026)
- [Integration of Object Detection and Small VLMs for Construction Safety Hazard Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.05210/) (2026)
- [Efficient Semantic Image Communication for Traffic Monitoring at the Edge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.12622/) (2026)
- [LLaVA-CKD: Bottom-Up Cascaded Knowledge Distillation for Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10641/) (2026)
- [PEDESTRIANQA: A Benchmark for Vision-Language Models on Pedestrian Intention and Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.24562/) (2026)
- [Zamba2-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.00390/) (2026)
- [TrustCLIP: Learning Private Visual Features via Adversarial Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04484/) (2026)
- [AVA-VLM: Adaptive Visual Attention-Vision Language Model for In-the-Wild Construction Site Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.05859/) (2026)
- [TALSC: Timeliness-Aware Large-Small VLM Collaboration for Infrastructure-Assisted Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.01998/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Vision Large Language Models (VLMs) combine visual understanding with natural language processing, enabling tasks like image captioning, visual question answering, and video analysis. While VLMs show impressive capabilities across domains such as autonomous vehicles, smart surveillance, and healthcare, their deployment on resource-constrained edge devices remains challenging due to processing power, memory, and energy limitations. This survey explores recent advancements in optimizing VLMs for edge environments, focusing on model compression techniques, including pruning, quantization, knowledge distillation, and specialized hardware solutions that enhance efficiency. We provide a detailed discussion of efficient training and fine-tuning methods, edge deployment challenges, and privacy considerations. Additionally, we discuss the diverse applications of lightweight VLMs across healthcare, environmental monitoring, and autonomous systems, illustrating their growing impact. By highlighting key design strategies, current challenges, and offering recommendations for future directions, this survey aims to inspire further research into the practical deployment of VLMs, ultimately making advanced AI accessible in resource-limited settings.