# FlexiMo: A Flexible Remote Sensing Foundation Model

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23844 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23844/

## Key facts

- Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 38 of its 60 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 31 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 38)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06377/) (2021)
- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [Learning Deep Features for Discriminative Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.04150/) (2015)
- [Rethinking Atrous Convolution for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.05587/) (2017)
- [Transformers are RNNs: Fast Autoregressive Transformers with Linear Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.16236/) (2020)
- [EuroSAT: A Novel Dataset and Deep Learning Benchmark for Land Use and Land Cover Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.00029/) (2017)
- [Unified Perceptual Parsing for Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.10221/) (2018)
- [SatMAE: Pre-training Transformers for Temporal and Multi-Spectral Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08051/) (2022)
- [RemoteCLIP: A Vision Language Foundation Model for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11029/) (2023)
- [GeoChat: Grounded Large Vision-Language Model for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15826/) (2023)
- [Scale-MAE: A Scale-Aware Masked Autoencoder for Multiscale Geospatial Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.14532/) (2022)
- [SpectralGPT: Spectral Remote Sensing Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07113/) (2023)
- [Seasonal Contrast: Unsupervised Pre-Training from Uncurated Remote Sensing Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16607/) (2021)
- [SkySense: A Multi-Modal Remote Sensing Foundation Model Towards Universal Interpretation for Earth Observation Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10115/) (2023)
- [Geography-Aware Self-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.09980/) (2020)
- [EfficientViT: Memory Efficient Vision Transformer with Cascaded Group Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.07027/) (2023)
- [CROMA: Remote Sensing Representations with Contrastive Radar-Optical Masked Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.00566/) (2023)
- [FlexiViT: One Model for All Patch Sizes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08013/) (2022)
- [Neural Plasticity-Inspired Multimodal Foundation Model for Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15356/) (2024)
- [AnySat: One Earth Observation Model for Many Resolutions, Scales, and Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14123/) (2024)
- [CRS-Diff: Controllable Remote Sensing Image Generation with Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11614/) (2024)
- [Feature Guided Masked Autoencoder for Self-supervised Learning in Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.18653/) (2023)
- [Self-supervised Vision Transformers for Joint SAR-optical Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05381/) (2022)
- [UV-SAM: Adapting Segment Anything Model for Urban Village Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.08083/) (2024)
- [USat: A Unified Self-Supervised Encoder for Multi-Sensor Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02199/) (2023)
- [Scaling Laws in Patchification: An Image Is Worth 50,176 Tokens And More](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.03738/) (2025)
- [ViTAR: Vision Transformer with Any Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.18361/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [TESSERA: Temporal Embeddings of Surface Spectra for Earth Representation and Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.20380/) (2025)
- [Geospatial Foundation Models to Enable Progress on Sustainable Development Goals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.24528/) (2025)
- [GeoLink: Empowering Remote Sensing Foundation Model with OpenStreetMap Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26016/) (2025)
- [THOR: A Versatile Foundation Model for Earth Observation Climate and Society Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.16011/) (2026)
- [RAMEN: Resolution-Adjustable Multimodal Encoder for Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.05025/) (2025)
- [Survey of Multimodal Geospatial Foundation Models: Techniques, Applications, and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.22964/) (2025)
- [Any-Optical-Model: A Universal Foundation Model for Optical Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17224/) (2025)
- [FUSE-RSVLM: Feature Fusion Vision-Language Model for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.24022/) (2025)
- [CARL: Camera-Agnostic Representation Learning for Spectral Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19223/) (2025)
- [CLDTracker: A Comprehensive Language Description for Visual Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.23704/) (2025)
- [ChatENV: An Interactive Vision-Language Model for Sensor-Guided Environmental Monitoring and Scenario Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10635/) (2025)
- [MAESTRO: Masked AutoEncoders for Multimodal, Multitemporal, and Multispectral Earth Observation Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10894/) (2025)
- [Agentic AI for Remote Sensing: Technical Challenges and Research Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.24919/) (2026)
- [Atomizer: Generalizing to new modalities by breaking satellite images down to a set of scalars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13542/) (2025)
- [Landslide Hazard Mapping with Geospatial Foundation Models: Geographical Generalizability, Data Scarcity, and Band Adaptability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.04474/) (2025)
- [AMD-HookNet++: Evolution of AMD-HookNet with Hybrid CNN-Transformer Feature Enhancement for Glacier Calving Front Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.14639/) (2025)
- [Thinking on Maps: How Foundation Model Agents Explore, Remember, and Reason Map Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.24504/) (2025)
- [SIGMAE: A Spectral-Index-Guided Foundation Model for Multispectral Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07463/) (2026)
- [Spatial-Temporal-Spectral Unified Modeling for Remote Sensing Dense Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12280/) (2025)
- [BioAnalyst: A Foundation Model for Biodiversity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.09080/) (2025)
- [Earth Science Foundation Models: From Perception to Reasoning and Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12542/) (2026)
- [Earth Observation Foundation Models for Terrestrial Ecohydrology: From Representation Learning to Process Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15282/) (2026)
- [VesselBench-800K: A Large-scale Perception Benchmark for Multimodal Vessel Detection, Counting, and Density Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.37003/) (2026)
- [Atomizer-IO: Beyond Pixels, Patches and Grids](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.40320/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The rapid expansion of multi-source satellite imagery drives innovation in Earth observation, opening unprecedented opportunities for Remote Sensing Foundation Models to harness diverse data. However, many existing models remain constrained by fixed spatial resolutions and patch sizes, limiting their ability to fully exploit the heterogeneous spatial characteristics inherent in satellite imagery. To address these challenges, we propose FlexiMo, a flexible remote sensing foundation model that endows the pre-trained model with the flexibility to adapt to arbitrary spatial resolutions. Central to FlexiMo is a spatial resolution-aware module that employs a parameter-free alignment embedding mechanism to dynamically recalibrate patch embeddings based on the input image's resolution and dimensions. This design not only preserves critical token characteristics and ensures multi-scale feature fidelity but also enables efficient feature extraction without requiring modifications to the underlying network architecture. In addition, FlexiMo incorporates a lightweight channel adaptation module that leverages prior spectral information from sensors. This mechanism allows the model to process images with varying numbers of channels while maintaining the data's intrinsic physical properties. Extensive experiments on diverse multimodal, multi-resolution, and multi-scale datasets demonstrate that FlexiMo significantly enhances model generalization and robustness. In particular, our method achieves outstanding performance across a range of downstream tasks, including scene classification, land cover classification, urban building segmentation, and cloud detection. By enabling parameter-efficient and physically consistent adaptation, FlexiMo paves the way for more adaptable and effective foundation models in real-world remote sensing applications.