mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

UniTS: Unified Spatio-Temporal Generative Model for Remote Sensing

arXiv 2512.04461 ↗First posted 4 Dec 2025cs.CVcited by 2

On the map: Diffusion models → Inverse problems and image restoration

Abstract (arXiv)

One of the primary objectives of satellite remote sensing is to capture the complex dynamics of the Earth environment, which encompasses tasks such as reconstructing continuous cloud-free image sequences, detecting land cover changes, and forecasting future surface evolution. However, existing methods typically require specialized models tailored to different tasks, and lack a general framework that can address these multi-level tasks from a unified perspective. In this paper, we propose a Unified Spatio-Temporal Generative Model (UniTS), which integrates several long-separated core tasks, including time series reconstruction, time series cloud removal, time series semantic change detection, and time series forecasting. Based on the flow matching generative paradigm, UniTS constructs a deterministic evolution path from noise to targets under the guidance of task-specific conditions, achieving unified modeling of spatiotemporal representations for multi-level tasks. The UniTS architecture consists of a diffusion transformer with spatiotemporal blocks, where we design an Adaptive Condition Injector (ACor) to enhance the model's conditional perception of multimodal inputs, enabling high-quality controllable generation. Additionally, we design a Spatiotemporal-aware Modulator (STM) to improve the ability of spatiotemporal blocks to capture complex spatiotemporal dependencies. It substantially outperforms existing specialized models, particularly under challenging conditions such as severe cloud contamination, modality absence, and forecasting complex phenological variations.

Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Inverse problems and image restoration, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. Builds on 37 of its 46 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 4 Dec 2025.

Builds on

37 of 46 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Effective Cloud Removal for Remote Sensing Images by an Improved Mean-Reverting Denoising Model with Elucidated Design Space31 Mar
  2. 2025SeedVR: Seeding Infinity in Diffusion Transformer Towards Generic Video Restoration2 Jan

Other references · 35

  1. 2020Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Modelscited by 20,851
  2. 2020Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equationscited by 8,964
  3. 2022Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformerscited by 5,931
  4. 2022Flow Matching for Generative Modelingcited by 5,426
  5. 2022Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flowcited by 3,550
  6. 2022Building Normalizing Flows with Stochastic Interpolantscited by 964
  7. 2022MotionDiffuse: Text-Driven Human Motion Generation with Diffusion Modelcited by 768
  8. 2024SiT: Exploring Flow and Diffusion-based Generative Models with Scalable Interpolant Transformerscited by 707
  9. 2024Latte: Latent Diffusion Transformer for Video Generationcited by 536
  10. 2022Scale-MAE: A Scale-Aware Masked Autoencoder for Multiscale Geospatial Representation Learningcited by 302
  11. 2022VRT: A Video Restoration Transformercited by 219
  12. 2023SkySense: A Multi-Modal Remote Sensing Foundation Model Towards Universal Interpretation for Earth Observation Imagerycited by 202
23 more
  1. 2021PredRNN: A Recurrent Neural Network for Spatiotemporal Predictive Learningcited by 181
  2. 2025History-Guided Video Diffusioncited by 165
  3. 2021Panoptic Segmentation of Satellite Image Time Series with Convolutional Temporal Attention Networkscited by 141
  4. 2025Long-Context Autoregressive Video Modeling with Next-Frame Predictioncited by 119
  5. 2024Rethinking Transformers Pre-training for Multi-Spectral Satellite Imagerycited by 82
  6. 2022DynamicEarthNet: Daily Multi-Spectral Satellite Dataset for Semantic Change Segmentationcited by 78
  7. 2024AnySat: One Earth Observation Model for Many Resolutions, Scales, and Modalitiescited by 73
  8. 2019Satellite Image Time Series Classification with Pixel-Set Encoders and Temporal Self-Attentioncited by 71
  9. 2024Progressive Autoregressive Video Diffusion Modelscited by 65
  10. 2021The Multi-Temporal Urban Development SpaceNet Datasetcited by 62
  11. 2023ViTs for SITS: Vision Transformers for Satellite Image Time Seriescited by 55
  12. 2024LARP: Tokenizing Videos with a Learned Autoregressive Generative Priorcited by 46
  13. 2022Joint Spatio-Temporal Modeling for the Semantic Change Detection in Remote Sensing Imagescited by 43
  14. 2021EarthNet2021: A large-scale dataset and challenge for Earth surface forecasting as a guided video prediction taskcited by 34
  15. 2022SEN12MS-CR-TS: A Remote Sensing Data Set for Multi-modal Multi-temporal Cloud Removalcited by 32
  16. 2023UnCRtainTS: Uncertainty Quantification for Cloud Removal in Optical Satellite Time Seriescited by 28
  17. 2025VideoScene: Distilling Video Diffusion Model to Generate 3D Scenes in One Stepcited by 27
  18. 2022SimVPv2: Towards Simple yet Powerful Spatiotemporal Predictive Learningcited by 20
  19. 2023Multi-modal learning for geospatial vegetation forecastingcited by 16
  20. 2024Long Video Diffusion Generation with Segmented Cross-Attention and Content-Rich Video Data Curationcited by 12
  21. 2023U-TILISE: A Sequence-to-sequence Model for Cloud Removal in Optical Satellite Time Seriescited by 8
  22. 2024AllClear: A Comprehensive Dataset and Benchmark for Cloud Removal in Satellite Imagerycited by 7
  23. 2022STAU: A SpatioTemporal-Aware Unit for Video Prediction and Beyondcited by 2

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.

2 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2023DiffusionSat: A Generative Foundation Model for Satellite Imagery
  2. 2024Changen2: Multi-Temporal Remote Sensing Generative Change Foundation Model
  3. 2025FlowEO: Generative Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Earth Observation
  4. 2023Diffusion Models for Earth Observation Use-cases: from cloud removal to urban change detection
  5. 2025Environment-Aware Satellite Image Generation with Diffusion Models
  6. 2025Spatiotemporal Satellite Image Downscaling with Transfer Encoders and Autoregressive Generative Models
  7. 2026RS-WorldModel: a Unified Model for Remote Sensing Understanding and Future Sense Forecasting
  8. 2026ChangeFlow -- Latent Rectified Flow for Change Detection in Remote Sensing