DRS-GUI: Dynamic Region Search for Training-Free GUI Grounding
On the map: Multimodal LLMs / vision-language models → Embodied and 3D vision-language models
also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)
GUI agents powered by Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have demonstrated impressive capability in understanding and executing user instructions. However, accurately grounding instruction-relevant elements from high-resolution screenshots cluttered with irrelevant UI components remains challenging for existing approaches. Inspired by how humans dynamically adjust their perceptual scope to locate task-related regions on complex screens, we propose DRS-GUI, a training-free dynamic region search framework for GUI grounding that can be seamlessly integrated into existing MLLMs. DRS-GUI introduces a lightweight UI Perceptor that performs three human-like perceptual actions (Focus, Shift, and Scatter) to progressively explore the interface and generate region proposals. To dynamically schedule these actions, we further design an Action Planner based on Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS). A region quality reward is employed to evaluate and select the highly instruction-relevant region, efficiently pruning redundant UI elements. Experiments demonstrate that DRS-GUI yields a 14% improvement on ScreenSpot-Pro for general and GUI-specific MLLMs (Qwen2.5-VL-7B and UGround-V1-7B), significantly enhancing grounding performance and generalization.
Key facts. Cited by 5 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 41 of its 51 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 15 May 2026.
Builds on
41 of 51 references.
Closest ancestors · 9
Same direction, newest first
- 2025Learning Active Perception via Self-Evolving Preference Optimization for GUI Grounding4 Sep
- 2025R-VLM: Region-Aware Vision Language Model for Precise GUI Grounding8 Jul
- 2025Ground-R1: Incentivizing Grounded Visual Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning26 May
- 2025ScreenSpot-Pro: GUI Grounding for Professional High-Resolution Computer Use4 Apr
- 2024OS-ATLAS: A Foundation Action Model for Generalist GUI Agents30 Oct
- 2024Navigating the Digital World as Humans Do: Universal Visual Grounding for GUI Agents7 Oct
- 2024OmniParser for Pure Vision Based GUI Agent1 Aug
- 2023CogAgent: A Visual Language Model for GUI Agents14 Dec
- 2023GPT-4V in Wonderland: Large Multimodal Models for Zero-Shot Smartphone GUI Navigation13 Nov
Other references · 32
- 2023GPT-4 Technical Reportcited by 18,396
- 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,715
- 2023LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Modelscited by 14,132
- 2025Qwen2.5-VL Technical Reportcited by 5,587
- 2024Qwen2.5 Technical Reportcited by 4,942
- 2024Qwen2-VL: Enhancing Vision-Language Model's Perception of the World at Any Resolutioncited by 4,234
- 2023Qwen Technical Reportcited by 3,344
- 2023InternVL: Scaling up Vision Foundation Models and Aligning for Generic Visual-Linguistic Taskscited by 2,565
- 2023Qwen-VL: A Versatile Vision-Language Model for Understanding, Localization, Text Reading, and Beyondcited by 2,224
- 2023Mind2Web: Towards a Generalist Agent for the Webcited by 1,242
- 2024How Far Are We to GPT-4V? Closing the Gap to Commercial Multimodal Models with Open-Source Suitescited by 1,050
- 2025UI-TARS: Pioneering Automated GUI Interaction with Native Agentscited by 610
20 more
- 2024SeeClick: Harnessing GUI Grounding for Advanced Visual GUI Agentscited by 567
- 2023V*: Guided Visual Search as a Core Mechanism in Multimodal LLMscited by 482
- 2022One Embedder, Any Task: Instruction-Finetuned Text Embeddingscited by 333
- 2024Mobile-Agent: Autonomous Multi-Modal Mobile Device Agent with Visual Perceptioncited by 293
- 2024Aguvis: Unified Pure Vision Agents for Autonomous GUI Interactioncited by 278
- 2024Aria-UI: Visual Grounding for GUI Instructionscited by 140
- 2025Grounded Reinforcement Learning for Visual Reasoningcited by 83
- 2025Enhancing Visual Grounding for GUI Agents via Self-Evolutionary Reinforcement Learningcited by 81
- 2024The Dawn of GUI Agent: A Preliminary Case Study with Claude 3.5 Computer Usecited by 63
- 2024CAT: Enhancing Multimodal Large Language Model to Answer Questions in Dynamic Audio-Visual Scenarioscited by 53
- 2024Visual Agents as Fast and Slow Thinkerscited by 53
- 2025DyFo: A Training-Free Dynamic Focus Visual Search for Enhancing LMMs in Fine-Grained Visual Understandingcited by 49
- 2025ACTIVE-o3: Empowering MLLMs with Active Perception via Pure Reinforcement Learningcited by 43
- 2025DiMo-GUI: Advancing Test-time Scaling in GUI Grounding via Modality-Aware Visual Reasoningcited by 31
- 2018Finding any Waldo: zero-shot invariant and efficient visual searchcited by 28
- 2024Falcon-UI: Understanding GUI Before Following User Instructionscited by 22
- 2025Learning GUI Grounding with Spatial Reasoning from Visual Feedbackcited by 12
- 2025When Eyes and Ears Disagree: Can MLLMs Discern Audio-Visual Confusion?cited by 8
- 2020Modeling human visual search: A combined Bayesian searcher and saliency map approach for eye movement guidance in natural scenescited by 6
- 2025A Training-Free, Task-Agnostic Framework for Enhancing MLLM Performance on High-Resolution Imagescited by 4
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2026: 5.
5 papers.
- 2026Perceive Before Reasoning: A Pre-Reasoning Perception Framework for Efficient and Reliable Proactive Mobile Agentscited by 0
- 2026GUI-Lens: Coarse-to-Fine Cropping for GUI Grounding with General-Purpose VLMscited by 0
- 2026Towards Omni-dimensional GUI Agent Navigation with Masked Trajectory Predictioncited by 0
- 2026Recurrent Latent Visual Search for GUI Groundingcited by 0
- 2026MHVF: Training-Free GUI Grounding via Verification-Guided Multi-Hypothesis Searchcited by 0
- 2026MHVF: Training-Free GUI Grounding via Verification-Guided Multi-Hypothesis Search13 Oct 2026
- 2026Recurrent Latent Visual Search for GUI Grounding4 Oct 2026
- 2026Towards Omni-dimensional GUI Agent Navigation with Masked Trajectory Prediction22 Sep 2026
- 2026GUI-Lens: Coarse-to-Fine Cropping for GUI Grounding with General-Purpose VLMs4 Aug 2026
- 2026Perceive Before Reasoning: A Pre-Reasoning Perception Framework for Efficient and Reliable Proactive Mobile Agents2 Jun 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026AdaZoom-GUI: Adaptive Zoom-based GUI Grounding with Instruction Refinement
- 2025MEGA-GUI: Multi-stage Enhanced Grounding Agents for GUI Elements
- 2026Hallucination-Free GUI Grounding via Regression-Free Layout-Aware Matching
- 2025textscGUI-Spotlight: Adaptive Iterative Focus Refinement for Enhanced GUI Visual Grounding
- 2025GUI-AIMA: Aligning Intrinsic Multimodal Attention with a Context Anchor for GUI Grounding
- 2025GUI-ARP: Enhancing Grounding with Adaptive Region Perception for GUI Agents
- 2026Seg2Click: Learning Pixel-Level Action Masks for GUI Visual Grounding
- 2026GUI-Eyes: Tool-Augmented Perception for Visual Grounding in GUI Agents