{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/sphere-a-hierarchical-evaluation-on-spatial","title":"SPHERE: A Hierarchical Evaluation on Spatial Perception and Reasoning for Vision-Language Models","arxiv_id":"2412.12693","date":"2024-12-17","proceeding":null,"authors":["Wenyu Zhang","Wei En Ng","Lixin Ma","Yuwen Wang","Jungqi Zhao","Boyang Li","Lu Wang"],"abstract":"Current vision-language models may incorporate single-dimensional spatial cues, such as depth, object boundary, and basic spatial directions (e.g. left, right, front, back), yet often lack the multi-dimensional spatial reasoning necessary for human-like understanding and real-world applications. To address this gap, we develop SPHERE (Spatial Perception and Hierarchical Evaluation of REasoning), a hierarchical evaluation framework with a new human-annotated dataset to pinpoint model strengths and weaknesses, advancing from single-skill tasks to multi-skill tasks, and ultimately to complex reasoning tasks that require the integration of multiple spatial and visual cues with logical reasoning. Benchmark evaluation of state-of-the-art open-source models reveal significant shortcomings, especially in the abilities to understand distance and proximity, to reason from both allocentric and egocentric viewpoints, and to perform complex reasoning in a physical context. This work underscores the need for more advanced approaches to spatial understanding and reasoning, paving the way for improvements in vision-language models and their alignment with human-like spatial capabilities. The dataset will be open-sourced upon publication.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.12693v1","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.12693v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"sphere-a-hierarchical-evaluation-on-spatial","repo_url":"https://github.com/zwenyu/SPHERE-VLM","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":0,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"pytorch","reach":{"status":"ok"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"logical-reasoning","task_name":"Logical Reasoning"},{"task_slug":"spatial-reasoning","task_name":"Spatial Reasoning"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":"https://syntology.ai/paper/2412.12693","atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2412.12693","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2412.12693"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-25T09:33:49+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/zwenyu/SPHERE-VLM","reach":{"status":"ok"}}],"summary":{"ran_draft_wrong":2,"ran_fixture":1,"unverified":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":4,"ran":3,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":4,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"6dc77bb22fb9d660","entry":"dynamic_preprocess","repo":"zwenyu/SPHERE-VLM","repo_kind":"official","path":"models/vision_language_models/intern_vl2_5.py","file_url":"https://github.com/zwenyu/SPHERE-VLM/blob/HEAD/models/vision_language_models/intern_vl2_5.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran_draft_wrong","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"MISDECLARED","metamorphic_tier":"well_formed","behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"6dc77bb22fb9d660"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"f41cb1a19b154297","entry":"encode_image","repo":"zwenyu/SPHERE-VLM","repo_kind":"official","path":"models/vision_language_models/gpt.py","file_url":"https://github.com/zwenyu/SPHERE-VLM/blob/HEAD/models/vision_language_models/gpt.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran_draft_wrong","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"OUTPUT_MISDECLARED","metamorphic_tier":"deterministic","behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"f41cb1a19b154297"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"bd77f5f8067f18e9","entry":"find_closest_aspect_ratio","repo":"zwenyu/SPHERE-VLM","repo_kind":"official","path":"models/vision_language_models/intern_vl2_5.py","file_url":"https://github.com/zwenyu/SPHERE-VLM/blob/HEAD/models/vision_language_models/intern_vl2_5.py","link_basis":"harvester_set","language":"python","status":"ran_fixture","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"RAISES","metamorphic_tier":"well_formed","behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"bd77f5f8067f18e9"}},{"code_sha256_prefix":"8e7f5895ff4790f2","entry":"build_transform","repo":"zwenyu/SPHERE-VLM","repo_kind":"official","path":"models/vision_language_models/intern_vl2_5.py","file_url":"https://github.com/zwenyu/SPHERE-VLM/blob/HEAD/models/vision_language_models/intern_vl2_5.py","link_basis":"plan_row","language":"python","status":"unverified","verification_level":0,"contract_check":null,"metamorphic_tier":null,"behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"NONE","inline_ok":false,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"8e7f5895ff4790f2"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}