@inproceedings{bai-etal-2026-text,
    title = "Text-to-{T}raj{V}is: Enabling Trajectory Data Visualizations from Natural Language Questions",
    author = "Bai, Tian  and
      Ying, Huiyan  and
      Suo, Kailong  and
      Wei, Victor Junqiu  and
      Fan, Tao  and
      Song, Yuanfeng",
    editor = "Liakata, Maria  and
      Moreira, Viviane P.  and
      Zhang, Jiajun  and
      Jurgens, David",
    booktitle = "Findings of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics: {ACL} 2026",
    month = jul,
    year = "2026",
    address = "San Diego, California, United States",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-acl/2026.findings-acl.972/",
    pages = "19456--19475",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-395-1",
    abstract = "This paper introduces the **Text-to-TrajVis** task, which aims to transform natural language questions into trajectory data visualizations, facilitating the development of natural language interfaces for trajectory visualization systems. As this is a novel task, there is currently no relevant dataset available in the community. To address this gap, we first devised a new visualization language called Trajectory Visualization Language (TVL) to facilitate querying trajectory data and generating visualizations. Building on this foundation, we further proposed a dataset construction method that integrates Large Language Models (LLMs) with human efforts to create high-quality data. Specifically, we devised a four-stage pipeline that begins with candidate extraction, proceeds through seed TVL generation and tree-based expansion, and concludes with LLM-driven question creation followed by human validation. This process results in the creation of the first large-scale Text-to-TrajVis dataset, named **TrajVL**, which contains 9,608 (question, TVL) pairs. We propose a framework called **TRCAT** for progressively converting natural language questions into TVLs. The framework incorporates TVL-RAG Chain Module and Area-Time Standardization Module, significantly enhancing the accuracy of LLMs in TVL generation. Based on the TrajVL dataset, we conduct a comprehensive evaluation of TRCAT{'}s performance across several mainstream LLMs (e.g., GPT, Qwen, LLaMA, and Gemma). Furthermore, we established a benchmarking system for this task, providing a foundation for future research in structured trajectory language generation."
}