# DVGBench: Implicit-to-Explicit Visual Grounding Benchmark in UAV Imagery with Large Vision-Language Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.00998 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.00998/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Embodied and 3D vision-language models, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models.
- Builds on 27 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jan 2026.

## Placed in

- 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, 27 of 27)

- [DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.12948/) (2025)
- [InternVL: Scaling up Vision Foundation Models and Aligning for Generic Visual-Linguistic Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14238/) (2023)
- [Modeling Context in Referring Expressions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.00272/) (2016)
- [Shikra: Unleashing Multimodal LLM's Referential Dialogue Magic](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15195/) (2023)
- [SWIFT:A Scalable lightWeight Infrastructure for Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.05517/) (2024)
- [Detection and Tracking Meet Drones Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.06303/) (2020)
- [Seg-Zero: Reasoning-Chain Guided Segmentation via Cognitive Reinforcement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.06520/) (2025)
- [PixelLM: Pixel Reasoning with Large Multimodal Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02228/) (2023)
- [LHRS-Bot: Empowering Remote Sensing with VGI-Enhanced Large Multimodal Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02544/) (2024)
- [RSVG: Exploring Data and Models for Visual Grounding on Remote Sensing Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.12634/) (2022)
- [VRSBench: A Versatile Vision-Language Benchmark Dataset for Remote Sensing Image Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12384/) (2024)
- [PhraseCut: Language-based Image Segmentation in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.01187/) (2020)
- [VHM: Versatile and Honest Vision Language Model for Remote Sensing Image Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20213/) (2024)
- [NExT-Chat: An LMM for Chat, Detection and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04498/) (2023)
- [Referring Expression Comprehension: A Survey of Methods and Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.09554/) (2020)
- [Rotated Multi-Scale Interaction Network for Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.12470/) (2023)
- [RRSIS: Referring Remote Sensing Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08625/) (2023)
- [GeoPixel: Pixel Grounding Large Multimodal Model in Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13925/) (2025)
- [Look-Back: Implicit Visual Re-focusing in MLLM Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.03019/) (2025)
- [GeoGround: A Unified Large Vision-Language Model for Remote Sensing Visual Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.11904/) (2024)
- [TransVG++: End-to-End Visual Grounding with Language Conditioned Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.06619/) (2022)
- [SegEarth-R1: Geospatial Pixel Reasoning via Large Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09644/) (2025)
- [RemoteSAM: Towards Segment Anything for Earth Observation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18022/) (2025)
- [Detecting Rotated Objects as Gaussian Distributions and Its 3-D Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.10839/) (2022)
- [Dynamic MDETR: A Dynamic Multimodal Transformer Decoder for Visual Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13959/) (2022)
- [ERA: A Dataset and Deep Learning Benchmark for Event Recognition in Aerial Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.11394/) (2020)
- [Iterative Robust Visual Grounding with Masked Reference based Centerpoint Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.12392/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Earth-OneVision: Extending Remote Sensing Multimodal Large Language Models to More Sensor Modalities and Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.10819/) (2026)
- [α3-SecBench: A Large-Scale Evaluation Suite of Security, Resilience, and Trust for LLM-based UAV Agents over 6G Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.18754/) (2026)
- [AeroGround: A Comprehensive Benchmark for Aerial-Ground Collaborative Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.14721/) (2026)
- [GrabVG: Graph-Attentive Binding for Visual Grounding in UAV Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.18996/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Remote sensing (RS) large vision-language models (LVLMs) have shown strong promise across visual grounding (VG) tasks. However, existing RS VG datasets predominantly rely on explicit referring expressions-such as relative position, relative size, and color cues-thereby constraining performance on implicit VG tasks that require scenario-specific domain knowledge. This article introduces DVGBench, a high-quality implicit VG benchmark for drones, covering six major application scenarios: traffic, disaster, security, sport, social activity, and productive activity. Each object provides both explicit and implicit queries. Based on the dataset, we design DroneVG-R1, an LVLM that integrates the novel Implicit-to-Explicit Chain-of-Thought (I2E-CoT) within a reinforcement learning paradigm. This enables the model to take advantage of scene-specific expertise, converting implicit references into explicit ones and thus reducing grounding difficulty. Finally, an evaluation of mainstream models on both explicit and implicit VG tasks reveals substantial limitations in their reasoning capabilities. These findings provide actionable insights for advancing the reasoning capacity of LVLMs for drone-based agents. The code and datasets will be released at https://github.com/zytx121/DVGBench