"Does the cafe entrance look accessible? Where is the door?" Towards
  Geospatial AI Agents for Visual Inquiries
Authors: name: Jon E. Froehlich; name: Jared Hwang; name: Zeyu Wang; name: John S. O'Meara; name: Xia Su; name: William Huang; name: Yang Zhang; name: Alex Fiannaca; name: Philip Nelson; name: Shaun Kane
Published: 2025-08-21 17:49:52

Abstract: Interactive digital maps have revolutionized how people travel and learn
about the world; however, they rely on pre-existing structured data in GIS
databases (e.g., road networks, POI indices), limiting their ability to address
geo-visual questions related to what the world looks like. We introduce our
vision for Geo-Visual Agents--multimodal AI agents capable of understanding and
responding to nuanced visual-spatial inquiries about the world by analyzing
large-scale repositories of geospatial images, including streetscapes (e.g.,
Google Street View), place-based photos (e.g., TripAdvisor, Yelp), and aerial
imagery (e.g., satellite photos) combined with traditional GIS data sources. We
define our vision, describe sensing and interaction approaches, provide three
exemplars, and enumerate key challenges and opportunities for future work.