# Any-Optical-Model: A Universal Foundation Model for Optical Remote Sensing

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.17224 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17224/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Functional Map of the World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07846/) (2017)
- [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)
- [SkySense: A Multi-Modal Remote Sensing Foundation Model Towards Universal Interpretation for Earth Observation Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10115/) (2023)
- [FlexiViT: One Model for All Patch Sizes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08013/) (2022)
- [GEO-Bench: Toward Foundation Models for Earth Monitoring](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.03831/) (2023)
- [Neural Plasticity-Inspired Multimodal Foundation Model for Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15356/) (2024)
- [BigEarthNet-MM: A Large Scale Multi-Modal Multi-Label Benchmark Archive for Remote Sensing Image Classification and Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.07921/) (2021)
- [Rethinking Transformers Pre-training for Multi-Spectral Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05419/) (2024)
- [AnySat: One Earth Observation Model for Many Resolutions, Scales, and Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14123/) (2024)
- [GeoPixel: Pixel Grounding Large Multimodal Model in Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13925/) (2025)
- [FlexiMo: A Flexible Remote Sensing Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23844/) (2025)
- [Active Fire Detection in Landsat-8 Imagery: a Large-Scale Dataset and a Deep-Learning Study](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.03409/) (2021)
- [SeaMo: A Season-Aware Multimodal Foundation Model for Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.19237/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Thinking on Maps: How Foundation Model Agents Explore, Remember, and Reason Map Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.24504/) (2025)
- [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)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Optical satellites, with their diverse band layouts and ground sampling distances, supply indispensable evidence for tasks ranging from ecosystem surveillance to emergency response. However, significant discrepancies in band composition and spatial resolution across different optical sensors present major challenges for existing Remote Sensing Foundation Models (RSFMs). These models are typically pretrained on fixed band configurations and resolutions, making them vulnerable to real world scenarios involving missing bands, cross sensor fusion, and unseen spatial scales, thereby limiting their generalization and practical deployment. To address these limitations, we propose Any Optical Model (AOM), a universal RSFM explicitly designed to accommodate arbitrary band compositions, sensor types, and resolution scales. To preserve distinctive spectral characteristics even when bands are missing or newly introduced, AOM introduces a spectrum-independent tokenizer that assigns each channel a dedicated band embedding, enabling explicit encoding of spectral identity. To effectively capture texture and contextual patterns from sub-meter to hundred-meter imagery, we design a multi-scale adaptive patch embedding mechanism that dynamically modulates the receptive field. Furthermore, to maintain global semantic consistency across varying resolutions, AOM incorporates a multi-scale semantic alignment mechanism alongside a channel-wise self-supervised masking and reconstruction pretraining strategy that jointly models spectral-spatial relationships. Extensive experiments on over 10 public datasets, including those from Sentinel-2, Landsat, and HLS, demonstrate that AOM consistently achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance under challenging conditions such as band missing, cross sensor, and cross resolution settings.