# WildDoc: How Far Are We from Achieving Comprehensive and Robust Document Understanding in the Wild?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.11015 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.11015/

## Key facts

- Cited by 26 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Document understanding and multimodal RAG, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 32 of its 49 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 May 2025.

## Placed in

- Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models / [Document understanding and multimodal RAG](https://mlsanity.com/mllm/document-understanding-and-multimodal-rag/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Gemini 1.5: Unlocking multimodal understanding across millions of tokens of context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05530/) (2024)
- [LLaVA-OneVision: Easy Visual Task Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03326/) (2024)
- [Phi-3 Technical Report: A Highly Capable Language Model Locally on Your Phone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.14219/) (2024)
- [Expanding Performance Boundaries of Open-Source Multimodal Models with Model, Data, and Test-Time Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.05271/) (2024)
- [ChartQA: A Benchmark for Question Answering about Charts with Visual and Logical Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10244/) (2022)
- [DocVQA: A Dataset for VQA on Document Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00398/) (2020)
- [ChatGLM: A Family of Large Language Models from GLM-130B to GLM-4 All Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12793/) (2024)
- [MiniCPM-V: A GPT-4V Level MLLM on Your Phone](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01800/) (2024)
- [Janus-Pro: Unified Multimodal Understanding and Generation with Data and Model Scaling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.17811/) (2025)
- [A Diagram Is Worth A Dozen Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.07396/) (2016)
- [Seed1.5-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07062/) (2025)
- [Monkey: Image Resolution and Text Label Are Important Things for Large Multi-modal Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.06607/) (2023)
- [Blind Image Quality Assessment via Vision-Language Correspondence: A Multitask Learning Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14968/) (2023)
- [LLaVAR: Enhanced Visual Instruction Tuning for Text-Rich Image Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17107/) (2023)
- [TextMonkey: An OCR-Free Large Multimodal Model for Understanding Document](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04473/) (2024)
- [OCRBench v2: An Improved Benchmark for Evaluating Large Multimodal Models on Visual Text Localization and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.00321/) (2024)
- [mPLUG-DocOwl: Modularized Multimodal Large Language Model for Document Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02499/) (2023)
- [InternLM-XComposer2-4KHD: A Pioneering Large Vision-Language Model Handling Resolutions from 336 Pixels to 4K HD](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06512/) (2024)
- [DocPedia: Unleashing the Power of Large Multimodal Model in the Frequency Domain for Versatile Document Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11810/) (2023)
- [TabPedia: Towards Comprehensive Visual Table Understanding with Concept Synergy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01326/) (2024)
- [TableVQA-Bench: A Visual Question Answering Benchmark on Multiple Table Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.19205/) (2024)
- [TextSquare: Scaling up Text-Centric Visual Instruction Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.12803/) (2024)
- [A Bounding Box is Worth One Token: Interleaving Layout and Text in a Large Language Model for Document Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.01976/) (2024)
- [Scalable Vision Language Model Training via High Quality Data Curation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05952/) (2025)
- [Harmonizing Visual Text Comprehension and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16364/) (2024)
- [Multi-modal In-Context Learning Makes an Ego-evolving Scene Text Recognizer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.13120/) (2023)
- [ViSpeak: Visual Instruction Feedback in Streaming Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12769/) (2025)
- [ParGo: Bridging Vision-Language with Partial and Global Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.12928/) (2024)
- [HRVDA: High-Resolution Visual Document Assistant](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06918/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [Real5-OmniDocBench: A Full-Scale Physical Reconstruction Benchmark for Robust Document Parsing in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.04205/) (2026)
- [DocPTBench: Benchmarking End-to-End Photographed Document Parsing and Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.18434/) (2025)
- [Towards Real-World Document Parsing via Realistic Scene Synthesis and Document-Aware Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.23885/) (2026)
- [ChartArena: Benchmarking Chart Parsing across Languages, Scenarios, and Formats](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.01348/) (2026)
- [StrucTab: A Structured Optimization Framework for Table Parsing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.29905/) (2026)
- [LPCAN: Lightweight Pyramid Cross-Attention Network for Rail Surface Defect Detection Using RGB-D Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09118/) (2026)
- [Knowledge-Embedded and Hypernetwork-Guided Few-Shot Substation Meter Defect Image Generation Method](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.09238/) (2026)
- [MA-LipNet: Multi-Dimensional Attention Networks for Robust Lipreading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.20881/) (2026)
- [The Diffusion Duet: Harmonizing Dual Channels with Wavelet Suppression for Image Separation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.13361/) (2026)
- [Detecting Deepfakes with Multivariate Soft Blending and CLIP-based Image-Text Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15903/) (2026)
- [Efficient Image Super-Resolution with Multi-Scale Spatial Adaptive Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00118/) (2026)
- [A Deformable Attention-Based Detection Transformer with Cross-Scale Feature Fusion for Industrial Coil Spring Inspection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13429/) (2026)
- [Transmittance-Guided Structure-Texture Decomposition for Nighttime Image Dehazing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.29507/) (2026)
- [Hierarchical Awareness Adapters with Hybrid Pyramid Feature Fusion for Dense Depth Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.03339/) (2026)
- [Adaptive Slicing-Assisted Hyper Inference for Enhanced Small Object Detection in High-Resolution Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19233/) (2026)
- [Feature Perturbation Pool-based Fusion Network for Unified Multi-Class Industrial Defect Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.19259/) (2026)
- [ShredBench: Evaluating the Semantic Reasoning Capabilities of Multimodal LLMs in Document Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.23813/) (2026)
- [Lightweight Real-Time Rendering Parameter Optimization via XGBoost-Driven Lookup Tables](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25178/) (2026)
- [Image Classification via Random Dilated Convolution with Multi-Branch Feature Extraction and Context Excitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25188/) (2026)
- [Gait Recognition via Deep Residual Networks and Multi-Branch Feature Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.27353/) (2026)
- [Local Spatiotemporal Convolutional Network for Robust Gait Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14548/) (2026)
- [Do You Need Text Rectification? Soft Attention Mask Embedding for Rectification-Free Scene Text Spotting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.18173/) (2026)
- [DAIN: Dynamic Agent-Based Interaction Network for Efficient and Collaborative Multimodal Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30189/) (2026)
- [ProWAFT: A ROMA-LPD Instance for Workload-Aware and Dynamic Fault Tolerance in FPGA-Based CNN Accelerators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.01602/) (2026)
- [Rank-Consistent Set Reasoning for Co-Salient Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.13706/) (2026)
- [Contour-Guided Spectral Routing for Robust Real-Time Pedestrian Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.14383/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The rapid advancements in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have significantly enhanced capabilities in Document Understanding. However, prevailing benchmarks like DocVQA and ChartQA predominantly comprise textitscanned or digital documents, inadequately reflecting the intricate challenges posed by diverse real-world scenarios, such as variable illumination and physical distortions. This paper introduces WildDoc, the inaugural benchmark designed specifically for assessing document understanding in natural environments. WildDoc incorporates a diverse set of manually captured document images reflecting real-world conditions and leverages document sources from established benchmarks to facilitate comprehensive comparisons with digital or scanned documents. Further, to rigorously evaluate model robustness, each document is captured four times under different conditions. Evaluations of state-of-the-art MLLMs on WildDoc expose substantial performance declines and underscore the models' inadequate robustness compared to traditional benchmarks, highlighting the unique challenges posed by real-world document understanding. Our project homepage is available at https://bytedance.github.io/WildDoc.