PhysNote: Self-Knowledge Notes for Evolvable Physical Reasoning in Vision-Language Model

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Zhang, Sinin, Xie, Yunfei, Cheng, Yuxuan, Zhang, Haoyu, Zhang, Tong
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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_version_ 1866913065348366336
author Zhang, Sinin
Xie, Yunfei
Cheng, Yuxuan
Zhang, Haoyu
Zhang, Tong
author_facet Zhang, Sinin
Xie, Yunfei
Cheng, Yuxuan
Zhang, Haoyu
Zhang, Tong
contents Vision-Language Models (VLMs) have demonstrated strong performance on textbook-style physics problems, yet they frequently fail when confronted with dynamic real-world scenarios that require temporal consistency and causal reasoning across frames. We identify two fundamental challenges underlying these failures: (1) spatio-temporal identity drift, where objects lose their physical identity across successive frames and break causal chains, and (2) volatility of inference-time insights, where a model may occasionally produce correct physical reasoning but never consolidates it for future reuse. To address these challenges, we propose PhysNote, an agentic framework that enables VLMs to externalize and refine physical knowledge through self-generated "Knowledge Notes." PhysNote stabilizes dynamic perception through spatio-temporal canonicalization, organizes self-generated insights into a hierarchical knowledge repository, and drives an iterative reasoning loop that grounds hypotheses in visual evidence before consolidating verified knowledge. Experiments on PhysBench demonstrate that PhysNote achieves 56.68% overall accuracy, a 4.96% improvement over the best multi-agent baseline, with consistent gains across all four physical reasoning domains.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_24443
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle PhysNote: Self-Knowledge Notes for Evolvable Physical Reasoning in Vision-Language Model
Zhang, Sinin
Xie, Yunfei
Cheng, Yuxuan
Zhang, Haoyu
Zhang, Tong
Artificial Intelligence
I.2.10; I.2.7
Vision-Language Models (VLMs) have demonstrated strong performance on textbook-style physics problems, yet they frequently fail when confronted with dynamic real-world scenarios that require temporal consistency and causal reasoning across frames. We identify two fundamental challenges underlying these failures: (1) spatio-temporal identity drift, where objects lose their physical identity across successive frames and break causal chains, and (2) volatility of inference-time insights, where a model may occasionally produce correct physical reasoning but never consolidates it for future reuse. To address these challenges, we propose PhysNote, an agentic framework that enables VLMs to externalize and refine physical knowledge through self-generated "Knowledge Notes." PhysNote stabilizes dynamic perception through spatio-temporal canonicalization, organizes self-generated insights into a hierarchical knowledge repository, and drives an iterative reasoning loop that grounds hypotheses in visual evidence before consolidating verified knowledge. Experiments on PhysBench demonstrate that PhysNote achieves 56.68% overall accuracy, a 4.96% improvement over the best multi-agent baseline, with consistent gains across all four physical reasoning domains.
title PhysNote: Self-Knowledge Notes for Evolvable Physical Reasoning in Vision-Language Model
topic Artificial Intelligence
I.2.10; I.2.7
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.24443