MM-R5: MultiModal Reasoning-Enhanced ReRanker via Reinforcement Learning for Document Retrieval

Multimodal document retrieval systems enable information access across text, images, and layouts, benefiting various domains like document-based question answering, report analysis, and interactive content summarization. Rerankers improve retrieval precision by reordering retrieved candidates. However, current multimodal reranking methods remain underexplored, with significant room for improvement in both training strategies and overall effectiveness. Moreover, the lack of explicit reasoning makes it difficult to analyze and optimize these methods further. In this paper, We propose MM-R5, a MultiModal Reasoning-Enhanced ReRanker via Reinforcement Learning for Document Retrieval, aiming to provide a more effective and reliable solution for multimodal reranking tasks. MM-R5 is trained in two stages: supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and reinforcement learning (RL). In the SFT stage, we focus on improving instruction-following and guiding the model to generate complete and high-quality reasoning chains. To support this, we introduce a novel data construction strategy that produces rich, high-quality reasoning data. In the RL stage, we design a task-specific reward framework, including a reranking reward tailored for multimodal candidates and a composite template-based reward to further refine reasoning quality. We conduct extensive experiments on MMDocIR, a challenging public benchmark spanning multiple domains. MM-R5 achieves state-of-the-art performance on most metrics and delivers comparable results to much larger models on the remaining ones. Moreover, compared to the best retrieval-only method, MM-R5 improves recall@1 by over 4%. These results validate the effectiveness of our reasoning-enhanced training pipeline.

FlightGPT: Towards Generalizable and Interpretable UAV Vision-and-Language Navigation with Vision-Language Models

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) is vital for applications such as disaster response, logistics delivery, and urban inspection. However, existing methods often struggle with insufficient multimodal fusion, weak generalization, and poor interpretability. To address these challenges, we propose FlightGPT, a novel UAV VLN framework built upon Vision-Language Models (VLMs) with powerful multimodal perception capabilities. We design a two-stage training pipeline: first, Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) using high-quality demonstrations to improve initialization and structured reasoning; then, Group Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO) algorithm, guided by a composite reward that considers goal accuracy, reasoning quality, and format compliance, to enhance generalization and adaptability. Furthermore, FlightGPT introduces a Chain-of-Thought (CoT)-based reasoning mechanism to improve decision interpretability. Extensive experiments on the city-scale dataset CityNav demonstrate that FlightGPT achieves state-of-the-art performance across all scenarios, with a 9.22\% higher success rate than the strongest baseline in unseen environments. Our implementation is publicly available.

A Multi-Granularity Retrieval Framework for Visually-Rich Documents

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems have predominantly focused on text-based retrieval, limiting their effectiveness in handling visually-rich documents that encompass text, images, tables, and charts. To bridge this gap, we propose a unified multi-granularity multimodal retrieval framework tailored for two benchmark tasks: MMDocIR and M2KR. Our approach integrates hierarchical encoding strategies, modality-aware retrieval mechanisms, and vision-language model (VLM)-based candidate filtering to effectively capture and utilize the complex interdependencies between textual and visual modalities. By leveraging off-the-shelf vision-language models and implementing a training-free hybrid retrieval strategy, our framework demonstrates robust performance without the need for task-specific fine-tuning. Experimental evaluations reveal that incorporating layout-aware search and VLM-based candidate verification significantly enhances retrieval accuracy, achieving a top performance score of 65.56. This work underscores the potential of scalable and reproducible solutions in advancing multimodal document retrieval systems.

A Multi-Granularity Multimodal Retrieval Framework for Multimodal Document Tasks

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) systems have predominantly focused on text-based retrieval, limiting their effectiveness in handling visually-rich documents that encompass text, images, tables, and charts. To bridge this gap, we propose a unified multi-granularity multimodal retrieval framework tailored for two benchmark tasks: MMDocIR and M2KR. Our approach integrates hierarchical encoding strategies, modality-aware retrieval mechanisms, and reranking modules to effectively capture and utilize the complex interdependencies between textual and visual modalities. By leveraging off-the-shelf vision-language models and implementing a training-free hybridretrieval strategy, our framework demonstrates robust performance without the need for task-specific fine-tuning. Experimental evaluations reveal that incorporating layout-aware search and reranking modules significantly enhances retrieval accuracy, achieving a top performance score of 65.56. This work underscores the potential of scalable and reproducible solutions in advancing multimodal document retrieval systems.

Intelligent System for Automated Molecular Patent Infringement Assessment

Automated drug discovery offers significant potential for accelerating the development of novel therapeutics by substituting labor-intensive human workflows with machine-driven processes. However, a critical bottleneck persists in the inability of current automated frameworks to assess whether newly designed molecules infringe upon existing patents, posing significant legal and financial risks. We introduce PatentFinder, a novel tool-enhanced and multi-agent framework that accurately and comprehensively evaluates small molecules for patent infringement. It incorporates both heuristic and model-based tools tailored for decomposed subtasks, featuring: MarkushParser, which is capable of optical chemical structure recognition of molecular and Markush structures, and MarkushMatcher, which enhances large language models' ability to extract substituent groups from molecules accurately. On our benchmark dataset MolPatent-240, PatentFinder outperforms baseline approaches that rely solely on large language models, demonstrating a 13.8\% increase in F1-score and a 12\% rise in accuracy. Experimental results demonstrate that PatentFinder mitigates label bias to produce balanced predictions and autonomously generates detailed, interpretable patent infringement reports. This work not only addresses a pivotal challenge in automated drug discovery but also demonstrates the potential of decomposing complex scientific tasks into manageable subtasks for specialized, tool-augmented agents.