mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Agentic AI in Remote Sensing: Foundations, Taxonomy, and Emerging Systems

arXiv 2601.01891 ↗First posted 5 Jan 2026cs.CVcited by 3

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Multimodal and embodied agents

Abstract (arXiv)

The paradigm of Earth Observation analysis is shifting from static deep learning models to autonomous agentic AI. Although recent vision foundation models and multimodal large language models advance representation learning, they often lack the sequential planning and active tool orchestration required for complex geospatial workflows. This survey presents the first comprehensive review of agentic AI in remote sensing. We introduce a unified taxonomy distinguishing between single-agent copilots and multi-agent systems while analyzing architectural foundations such as planning mechanisms, retrieval-augmented generation, and memory structures. Furthermore, we review emerging benchmarks that move the evaluation from pixel-level accuracy to trajectory-aware reasoning correctness. By critically examining limitations in grounding, safety, and orchestration, this work outlines a strategic roadmap for the development of robust, autonomous geospatial intelligence.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Multimodal and embodied agents, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 102 of its 159 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 Jan 2026.

Builds on

102 of 159 references.

Closest ancestors · 12

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Empowering LLM Agents with Geospatial Awareness: Toward Grounded Reasoning for Wildfire Response14 Oct
  2. 2025Earth-Agent: Unlocking the Full Landscape of Earth Observation with Agents27 Sep
  3. 2025Agentic UAVs: LLM-Driven Autonomy with Integrated Tool-Calling and Cognitive Reasoning14 Sep
  4. 2025GeoJSON Agents:A Multi-Agent LLM Architecture for Geospatial Analysis-Function Calling vs Code Generation10 Sep
  5. 2025ThinkGeo: Evaluating Tool-Augmented Agents for Remote Sensing Tasks29 May
  6. 2025UAV-CodeAgents: Scalable UAV Mission Planning via Multi-Agent ReAct and Vision-Language Reasoning12 May
  7. 2025GeoBenchX: Benchmarking LLMs in Agent Solving Multistep Geospatial Tasks23 Mar
  8. 2025Multi-Agent Geospatial Copilots for Remote Sensing Workflows27 Jan
  9. 2024GIS Copilot: Towards an Autonomous GIS Agent for Spatial Analysis5 Nov
  10. 2024An LLM Agent for Automatic Geospatial Data Analysis24 Oct
  11. 2024ShapefileGPT: A Multi-Agent Large Language Model Framework for Automated Shapefile Processing16 Oct
  12. 2024RS-Agent: Automating Remote Sensing Tasks through Intelligent Agent11 Jun

Other references · 90

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 51,809
  3. 2021Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervisioncited by 33,456
  4. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  5. 2020An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scalecited by 29,915
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  8. 2021LoRA: Low-Rank Adaptation of Large Language Modelscited by 14,084
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  12. 2014ImageNet Large Scale Visual Recognition Challengecited by 8,441
38 more
  1. 2023Segment Anythingcited by 8,158
  2. 2023Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 7,792
  3. 2021Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learnerscited by 7,339
  4. 2023BLIP-2: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training with Frozen Image Encoders and Large Language Modelscited by 6,069
  5. 2022Flamingo: a Visual Language Model for Few-Shot Learningcited by 4,337
  6. 2024Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolutioncited by 4,151
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  9. 2017EuroSAT: A Novel Dataset and Deep Learning Benchmark for Land Use and Land Cover Classificationcited by 1,488
  10. 2021SimMIM: A Simple Framework for Masked Image Modelingcited by 1,147
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  12. 2017Remote Sensing Image Scene Classification: Benchmark and State of the Artcited by 791
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  14. 2023Language Is Not All You Need: Aligning Perception with Language Modelscited by 543
  15. 2023Identifying the Risks of LM Agents with an LM-Emulated Sandboxcited by 514
  16. 2022SatMAE: Pre-training Transformers for Temporal and Multi-Spectral Satellite Imagerycited by 402
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  19. 2023GeoChat: Grounded Large Vision-Language Model for Remote Sensingcited by 320
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  21. 2018DeepGlobe 2018: A Challenge to Parse the Earth through Satellite Imagescited by 276
  22. 2021LoveDA: A Remote Sensing Land-Cover Dataset for Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentationcited by 259
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  26. 2020Geography-Aware Self-Supervised Learningcited by 190
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  31. 2023SatCLIP: Global, General-Purpose Location Embeddings with Satellite Imagerycited by 148
  32. 2018xView: Objects in Context in Overhead Imagerycited by 145
  33. 2021FAIR1M: A Benchmark Dataset for Fine-grained Object Recognition in High-Resolution Remote Sensing Imagerycited by 143
  34. 2023ImageBind-LLM: Multi-modality Instruction Tuningcited by 142
  35. 2019xBD: A Dataset for Assessing Building Damage from Satellite Imagerycited by 138
  36. 2024LHRS-Bot: Empowering Remote Sensing with VGI-Enhanced Large Multimodal Language Modelcited by 133
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  38. 2021Towards artificial general intelligence via a multimodal foundation modelcited by 112

50 most cited of 90 All 90 (JSON)

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.

3 papers.

  1. 2026FlameVQA: A Physically-Grounded UAV Wildfire VQA Benchmark with Radiometric Thermal Supervisioncited by 1
  2. 2026EarthVerse: Benchmarking Scientific Agents Across Dynamic Earth Systems and Natural Hazardscited by 0
  3. 2026ANASSA: An Agentic AI Orchestration Framework for Spatial Intelligencecited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Agentic AI for Remote Sensing: Technical Challenges and Research Directions
  2. 2026OpenEarthAgent: A Unified Framework for Tool-Augmented Geospatial Agents
  3. 2026TerraLogic: A Benchmark for Hierarchical Geospatial Reasoning in Earth Observation
  4. 2026HiRS-Agent: A Hierarchical Multi-Agent System for Reliable Long-Horizon Remote Sensing Task Solving
  5. 2026Bridging Perception and Action: A Lightweight Multimodal Meta-Planner Framework for Robust Earth Observation Agents ↗
  6. 2026GeoAgent: Evaluating VLM Geolocalization Through Embodied Navigation
  7. 2025Visual Reasoning Agent: Robust Vision Systems in Remote Sensing via Inference-Time Scaling
  8. 2026GeoForge: Non-Parametric Self-Evolving Agents for Earth-Observation Reasoning