# Chain-of-Ground: Improving GUI Grounding via Iterative Reasoning and Reference Feedback

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.01979 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.01979/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Multimodal reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 24 of its 50 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Dec 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Multimodal reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/multimodal-reasoning/)
- 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, 24 of 24)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Qwen2.5-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.13923/) (2025)
- [GPT-4o System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21276/) (2024)
- [Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05499/) (2023)
- [InternVL3.5: Advancing Open-Source Multimodal Models in Versatility, Reasoning, and Efficiency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18265/) (2025)
- [YOLOX: Exceeding YOLO Series in 2021](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08430/) (2021)
- [UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12326/) (2025)
- [OS-ATLAS: A Foundation Action Model for Generalist GUI Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.23218/) (2024)
- [Seed1.5-VL Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07062/) (2025)
- [Set-of-Mark Prompting Unleashes Extraordinary Visual Grounding in GPT-4V](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11441/) (2023)
- [OmniParser for Pure Vision Based GUI Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00203/) (2024)
- [You Only Look at Screens: Multimodal Chain-of-Action Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11436/) (2023)
- [OpenCUA: Open Foundations for Computer-Use Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.09123/) (2025)
- [Aria-UI: Visual Grounding for GUI Instructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16256/) (2024)
- [Scaling Computer-Use Grounding via User Interface Decomposition and Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13227/) (2025)
- [GPT-4V in Wonderland: Large Multimodal Models for Zero-Shot Smartphone GUI Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.07562/) (2023)
- [GTA1: GUI Test-time Scaling Agent](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.05791/) (2025)
- [UI-Venus Technical Report: Building High-performance UI Agents with RFT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.10833/) (2025)
- [Enhancing Visual Grounding for GUI Agents via Self-Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.12370/) (2025)
- [PointArena: Probing Multimodal Grounding Through Language-Guided Pointing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09990/) (2025)
- [Improved GUI Grounding via Iterative Narrowing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.13591/) (2024)
- [textscGUI-Spotlight: Adaptive Iterative Focus Refinement for Enhanced GUI Visual Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.04039/) (2025)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Avenir-Web: Human-Experience-Imitating Multimodal Web Agents with Mixture of Grounding Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02468/) (2026)
- [What Happens Before Decoding? Prefill Determines GUI Grounding in VLMs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.12549/) (2026)
- [MedSPOT: A Workflow-Aware Sequential Grounding Benchmark for Clinical GUI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19993/) (2026)
- [One Forward Beats Two: InnerZoom for Accurate and Efficient GUI Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.30084/) (2026)
- [RankGround: Efficient High-Resolution GUI Grounding via Lightweight Reranker-Guided Crop Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.18690/) (2026)
- [Recurrent Latent Visual Search for GUI Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.05185/) (2026)
- [MHVF: Training-Free GUI Grounding via Verification-Guided Multi-Hypothesis Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.17792/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

GUI grounding aims to align natural language instructions with precise regions in complex user interfaces. Advanced multimodal large language models show strong ability in visual GUI grounding but still struggle with small or visually similar targets and ambiguity in real world layouts. These limitations arise from limited grounding capacity and from underuse of existing reasoning potential. We present Chain of Ground CoG a training free multi step grounding framework that uses multimodal large language models for iterative visual reasoning and refinement. Instead of direct prediction the model progressively reflects and adjusts its hypotheses leading to more accurate and interpretable localization. Our approach achieves 68.4 accuracy on the ScreenSpot Pro benchmark an improvement of 4.8 points. To measure real world generalization we introduce TPanel UI a dataset of 420 labeled industrial control panels with visual distortions such as blur and masking. On TPanel UI Chain of Ground improves over the strong baseline Qwen3 VL 235B by 6.9 points showing the effectiveness of multi step training free grounding across real world and digital interfaces. These results highlight a direction for unlocking grounding potential through structured iterative refinement instead of additional training.