VLRS-Bench: A Vision-Language Reasoning Benchmark for Remote Sensing
On the map: LLM reasoning → Spatial and embodied reasoning
Abstract (arXiv)
Recent advancements in Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have enabled complex reasoning. However, existing remote sensing (RS) benchmarks remain heavily biased toward perception tasks, such as object recognition and scene classification. This limitation hinders the development of MLLMs for cognitively demanding RS applications. To address this, we propose a Vision Language ReaSoning Benchmark (VLRS-Bench), which is the first benchmark exclusively dedicated to complex RS reasoning. Structured across the three core dimensions of Cognition, Decision, and Prediction, VLRS-Bench comprises 2,000 question-answer pairs with an average question length of 130.19 words, spanning 14 tasks and up to eight temporal phases. VLRS-Bench is constructed via a specialized pipeline that integrates RS-specific priors and expert knowledge to ensure geospatial realism and reasoning complexity. Experimental results reveal significant bottlenecks in existing state-of-the-art MLLMs, providing critical insights for advancing multimodal reasoning within the remote sensing community. The project repository is available at https://github.com/MiliLab/VLRS-Bench.
Key facts. Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning. Builds on 48 of its 78 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 4 Feb 2026.
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 6.
6 papers.
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- 2026More with Less: a Large Scale Remote Sensing VLM with a Simple Recipecited by 0
- 2026RS-RIE-Bench: Benchmarking Reasoning-Guided Remote Sensing Image Editingcited by 0
- 2026RRS-10K: A Multitask Vision-Language Model Benchmark for Rare Remote Sensing Image Interpretationcited by 0
- 2026LongEarth-R1: Benchmarking and Aligning Vision-Language Models for Long-Horizon Earth Observation Reasoningcited by 0
- 2026Hard Vision, Easy Vision: What GPT-6 Astra Reveals Across Computer Vision28 Sep 2026
- 2026LongEarth-R1: Benchmarking and Aligning Vision-Language Models for Long-Horizon Earth Observation Reasoning13 Aug 2026
- 2026RSVideo: Are Your Vision-Language Models Ready for Remote Sensing Videos?3 Aug 2026
- 2026RS-RIE-Bench: Benchmarking Reasoning-Guided Remote Sensing Image Editing22 Jul 2026
- 2026More with Less: a Large Scale Remote Sensing VLM with a Simple Recipe17 Jul 2026
- 2026RRS-10K: A Multitask Vision-Language Model Benchmark for Rare Remote Sensing Image Interpretation13 Jul 2026
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