Scale, Don't Fine-tune: Guiding Multimodal LLMs for Efficient Visual Place Recognition at Test-Time

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Cheng, Jintao, Li, Weibin, Luo, Jiehao, Tang, Xiaoyu, He, Zhijian, Wu, Jin, Zou, Yao, Zhang, Wei
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Cheng, Jintao
Li, Weibin
Luo, Jiehao
Tang, Xiaoyu
He, Zhijian
Wu, Jin
Zou, Yao
Zhang, Wei
author_facet Cheng, Jintao
Li, Weibin
Luo, Jiehao
Tang, Xiaoyu
He, Zhijian
Wu, Jin
Zou, Yao
Zhang, Wei
contents Visual Place Recognition (VPR) has evolved from handcrafted descriptors to deep learning approaches, yet significant challenges remain. Current approaches, including Vision Foundation Models (VFMs) and Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), enhance semantic understanding but suffer from high computational overhead and limited cross-domain transferability when fine-tuned. To address these limitations, we propose a novel zero-shot framework employing Test-Time Scaling (TTS) that leverages MLLMs' vision-language alignment capabilities through Guidance-based methods for direct similarity scoring. Our approach eliminates two-stage processing by employing structured prompts that generate length-controllable JSON outputs. The TTS framework with Uncertainty-Aware Self-Consistency (UASC) enables real-time adaptation without additional training costs, achieving superior generalization across diverse environments. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in cross-domain VPR performance with up to 210$\times$ computational efficiency gains.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_02129
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Scale, Don't Fine-tune: Guiding Multimodal LLMs for Efficient Visual Place Recognition at Test-Time
Cheng, Jintao
Li, Weibin
Luo, Jiehao
Tang, Xiaoyu
He, Zhijian
Wu, Jin
Zou, Yao
Zhang, Wei
Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Visual Place Recognition (VPR) has evolved from handcrafted descriptors to deep learning approaches, yet significant challenges remain. Current approaches, including Vision Foundation Models (VFMs) and Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs), enhance semantic understanding but suffer from high computational overhead and limited cross-domain transferability when fine-tuned. To address these limitations, we propose a novel zero-shot framework employing Test-Time Scaling (TTS) that leverages MLLMs' vision-language alignment capabilities through Guidance-based methods for direct similarity scoring. Our approach eliminates two-stage processing by employing structured prompts that generate length-controllable JSON outputs. The TTS framework with Uncertainty-Aware Self-Consistency (UASC) enables real-time adaptation without additional training costs, achieving superior generalization across diverse environments. Experimental results demonstrate significant improvements in cross-domain VPR performance with up to 210$\times$ computational efficiency gains.
title Scale, Don't Fine-tune: Guiding Multimodal LLMs for Efficient Visual Place Recognition at Test-Time
topic Machine Learning
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02129