mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Vision-DeepResearch: Incentivizing DeepResearch Capability in Multimodal Large Language Models

arXiv 2601.22060 ↗First posted 29 Jan 2026cs.CV cs.AIcited by 37

On the map: Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models → Document understanding and multimodal RAG

Abstract (arXiv)

Multimodal large language models (MLLMs) have achieved remarkable success across a broad range of vision tasks. However, constrained by the capacity of their internal world knowledge, prior work has proposed augmenting MLLMs by ``reasoning-then-tool-call'' for visual and textual search engines to obtain substantial gains on tasks requiring extensive factual information. However, these approaches typically define multimodal search in a naive setting, assuming that a single full-level or entity-level image query and few text query suffices to retrieve the key evidence needed to answer the question, which is unrealistic in real-world scenarios with substantial visual noise. Moreover, they are often limited in the reasoning depth and search breadth, making it difficult to solve complex questions that require aggregating evidence from diverse visual and textual sources. Building on this, we propose Vision-DeepResearch, which proposes one new multimodal deep-research paradigm, i.e., performs multi-turn, multi-entity and multi-scale visual and textual search to robustly hit real-world search engines under heavy noise. Our Vision-DeepResearch supports dozens of reasoning steps and hundreds of engine interactions, while internalizing deep-research capabilities into the MLLM via cold-start supervision and RL training, resulting in a strong end-to-end multimodal deep-research MLLM. It substantially outperforming existing multimodal deep-research MLLMs, and workflows built on strong closed-source foundation model such as GPT-5, Gemini-2.5-pro and Claude-4-Sonnet. The code will be released in https://github.com/Osilly/Vision-DeepResearch.

Key facts. Cited by 37 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Document understanding and multimodal RAG, one of 16 directions in Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models. Builds on 18 of its 26 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 29 Jan 2026.

Builds on

18 of 26 references.

Closest ancestors · 2

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025DeepMMSearch-R1: Empowering Multimodal LLMs in Multimodal Web Search14 Oct
  2. 2025MMSearch-R1: Incentivizing LMMs to Search25 Jun

Other references · 16

  1. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,379
  2. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  3. 2023Visual Instruction Tuningcited by 7,869
  4. 2025DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learningcited by 6,330
  5. 2025Gemini 2.5: Pushing the Frontier with Advanced Reasoning, Multimodality, Long Context, and Next Generation Agentic Capabilitiescited by 3,796
  6. 2025OpenAI GPT-5 System Cardcited by 989
  7. 2025Vision-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in Multimodal Large Language Modelscited by 665
  8. 2025WebSailor: Navigating Super-human Reasoning for Web Agentcited by 229
  9. 2025WebDancer: Towards Autonomous Information Seeking Agencycited by 188
  10. 2016FVQA: Fact-based Visual Question Answeringcited by 181
  11. 2025WebWalker: Benchmarking LLMs in Web Traversalcited by 175
  12. 2025WebShaper: Agentically Data Synthesizing via Information-Seeking Formalizationcited by 121
4 more
  1. 2025WebWatcher: Breaking New Frontier of Vision-Language Deep Research Agentcited by 119
  2. 2025Reinforcement Learning for Long-Horizon Interactive LLM Agentscited by 108
  3. 2025Defeating the Training-Inference Mismatch via FP16cited by 66
  4. 2025MMSearch-Plus: Benchmarking Provenance-Aware Search for Multimodal Browsing Agentscited by 38

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 37.

37 papers.

Sort:

By area:

  1. 2026REDSearcher: A Scalable and Cost-Efficient Framework for Long-Horizon Search Agentscited by 49
  2. 2026Harness VLA: Steering Frozen VLAs into Reliable Manipulation Primitives via Memory-Guided Agentscited by 47
  3. 2026Flow-OPD: On-Policy Distillation for Flow Matching Modelscited by 34
  4. 2026Gen-Searcher: Reinforcing Agentic Search for Image Generationcited by 30
  5. 2026SkillFlow:Benchmarking Lifelong Skill Discovery and Evolution for Autonomous Agentscited by 25
  6. 2026OpenSearch-VL: An Open Recipe for Frontier Multimodal Search Agentscited by 21
  7. 2026Unify-Agent: A Unified Multimodal Agent for World-Grounded Image Synthesiscited by 17
  8. 2026Towards Long-horizon Agentic Multimodal Searchcited by 11
  9. 2026HyperEyes: Dual-Grained Efficiency-Aware Reinforcement Learning for Parallel Multimodal Search Agentscited by 10
  10. 2026BrowseComp-V3: A Visual, Vertical, and Verifiable Benchmark for Multimodal Browsing Agentscited by 8
  11. 2026PatchCue: Enhancing Vision-Language Model Reasoning with Patch-Based Visual Cuescited by 8
  12. 2026Visual-Seeker: Towards Visual-Native Multimodal Agentic Search via Active Visual Reasoningcited by 8
25 more
  1. 2026VimRAG: Navigating Massive Visual Context in Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Multimodal Memory Graphcited by 5
  2. 2026Agentic-MME: What Agentic Capability Really Brings to Multimodal Intelligence?cited by 5
  3. 2026InterLV-Search: Benchmarking Interleaved Multimodal Agentic Searchcited by 5
  4. 2026S1-DeepResearch: Beyond Search, Toward Real-World Long-Horizon Research Agentscited by 5
  5. 2026SearchEyes: Towards Frontier Multimodal Deep Search Intelligence via Search World Simulationcited by 5
  6. 2026TRACER: Verifiable Generative Provenance for Multimodal Tool-Using Agentscited by 3
  7. 2026REVERSE: Reinforcing Evidence Verification and Search for Agentic Image geo-localizationcited by 2
  8. 2026InterleaveThinker: Reinforcing Agentic Interleaved Generationcited by 2
  9. 2026SimpleSearch-VL: A Simple Recipe for Multimodal Agentic Deep Searchcited by 2
  10. 2026ADORA: Training Reasoning Models with Dynamic Advantage Estimation on Reinforcement Learningcited by 1
  11. 2026Internalizing Meta-Experience into Memory for Guided Reinforcement Learning in Large Language Modelscited by 1
  12. 2026ToolAnchor: Anchoring Counterfactual Context to Boost Agentic Tool-use Capabilitycited by 1
  13. 2026LongChart VQA: A Comprehensive Benchmark for MLLMs with Complex Multi-Chart Reasoningcited by 1
  14. 2026WeAgent-MMSearch: Native Text-Vision Interaction for Multimodal Search Agentscited by 1
  15. 2026VideoGAIA: A Benchmark for General AI Assistants on Agentic Video Understandingcited by 0
  16. 2026PathoArgus: Advancing Evidence-Grounded Long-Context Visual Reasoning across Gigapixel Whole-Slide and Multi-Slide Case Contextscited by 0
  17. 2026Thinking Beyond Videos: Unifying Video Reasoning and Deep Research for Open-World Video Agentscited by 0
  18. 2026AdaVDR: Adaptive Tool Use and Reflection for Video Deep Researchcited by 0
  19. 2026LiteSearch-VL: Small Multimodal Search Agents via Trajectory Distillation and Synthetic Step-DPOcited by 0
  20. 2026Stable-MM-R1: Anchoring Multimodal Reasoning Dynamics via Entropy-Guided Stratificationcited by 0
  21. 2026EviRover: Reinforcing Agentic Perception Beyond a Glancecited by 0
  22. 2026VideoResearchAgent: Grounded Task Synthesis and Sim-to-Real RL for Open-Web Video Researchcited by 0
  23. 2026Long-MDR: Long-Context Reinforcement Learning for Multimodal Deep-Research Agentscited by 0
  24. 2026OneSearch-VL: Unified Multimodal Deep Research Agent for Image and Videocited by 0
  25. 2026Neos: Learning to Interleave Search and Visual Reasoningcited by 0

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Vision-DeepResearch Benchmark: Rethinking Visual and Textual Search for Multimodal Large Language Models
  2. 2026DeepVoyager-VL: Incentivizing Vision-in-the-Loop Search for Long-Horizon Multimodal Agents
  3. 2026Indexing Multimodal Language Models for Large-scale Image Retrieval
  4. 2024Vision Search Assistant: Empower Vision-Language Models as Multimodal Search Engines
  5. 2026MTA-Agent: An Open Recipe for Multimodal Deep Search Agents
  6. 2026VisLens: Single-Pass Interpretable Visual Search for Multimodal LLMs
  7. 2025mRAG: Elucidating the Design Space of Multi-modal Retrieval-Augmented Generation
  8. 2026AiSearch: Interactive Multi-Modal Search with VLMs