Research regarding the sign language recognition mostly relies on RGB images, whileas sign language datasets that provide depth images are limited. Point clouds obtained from depth images can be used for sign language recognition with neural networks like PointNet. In recent years, various neural networks are used for generating realistic depth images from monocular RGB images. In this work, synthetic depth images were created from RGB images using Depth Anything V2 network. For this purpose, three sign language datasets (Real-time ASL Fingerspelling, KArSL, AUTSL) which contain both RGB and depth images were used. Classification accuracies of the point cloud data created from both original and synthetic depth images using various PointNet architectures were measured for sign language recognition. From the original and synthetic point clouds, frame based, Point Gesture Map and Long Short Term Memory data models were used for classification and their performances were compared. In the results, both original and synthetic based data achieved acceptable performance in most models. In general, original depth based point cloud models performed better than synthetic ones, however in some models synthetic depth based models performed better than the originals.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.09400
Learning-based wireless localizers often fail to utilize geometric information about the propagation environment, limiting their ability to exploit non-line-of-sight (NLoS) propagation and generalize across scenes. To bridge this gap, we propose GLocFM, a Geometry-aware Localization Foundation Model, which jointly exploits WiFi measurements and scene geometry represented as a 3D point cloud. We formulate localization as a maximum-likelihood (ML) estimation problem, where the goal is to find a transmitter position that maximizes the likelihood of the wireless observations conditioned on the scene geometry. The likelihood of a candidate transmitter position is calculated by a learned scoring function that matches the observed delay--angle-of-arrival (AoA) spectrum against the spectrum predicted for that candidate. A hierarchical scene encoder extracts propagation-relevant features to produce geometric priors for LoS and one-bounce reflection paths. For scenarios with imperfect synchronization, we further introduce a time-of-flight (ToF)-robust GLocFM model to handle unknown ToF offsets. GLocFM is trained on a multi-modal synthetic indoor localization dataset comprising 221 diverse scenes whose associated wireless signals are generated using Sionna RT. On both synthetic and the NeRF$^{2}$ dataset based on real measurements, GLocFM reduces mean 3D localization error relative to one of the state-of-the-art localization baselines by 49.5\% and 48.8\%, respectively. Ablations across different number of receiver, bandwidths, and array sizes further demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed framework.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.09285
Cross-modal place recognition (CMPR) aims to identify the same location across heterogeneous sensing modalities, such as vision and LiDAR. Existing methods commonly bridge the modality gap using complex alignment modules, multi-stage training, or full fine-tuning of pretrained backbones. In this work, we revisit CMPR from the perspective of geometric consistency and propose GeoUniPR, a unified and concise geometry-consistent framework. GeoUniPR reduces cross-modal discrepancy at the representation level by projecting LiDAR point clouds into the camera perspective to construct Geometry-Consistent depth image views (DIV), which establish direct RGB-LiDAR correspondence. We further augment DIV with native LiDAR cues, including intensity and surface-normal information, yielding a multi-channel geometric representation that improves structural consistency. Based on this representation, GeoUniPR learns a unified embedding space using two modality-specific ViT-based encoders with identical architectures, trained through parameter-efficient adaptation without auxiliary alignment modules, multi-stage training, or full backbone fine-tuning. In addition, we introduce Spatially-Consistent InfoNCE (SC-InfoNCE), a CMPR-specific contrastive objective that suppresses distance-induced false negatives under spatial continuity. Extensive experiments on KITTI and KITTI-360 demonstrate that GeoUniPR achieves state-of-the-art (SOTA) performance in both same-modal and cross-modal place recognition, with strong cross-dataset generalization.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.11263
Fine-grained damage classification of 3D point cloud data (PCD) remains a persistent challenge, constrained by high computational demands and limited labeled data. This study examines two methods: 3D PCD-based damage assessment (3PDA) algorithm and 2D projection damage assessment (2PDA) In our 3PDA analysis algorithm, TDA is used to derive compact representations of 3D PCD segmented by pointNet, which are then integrated with anomaly detection algorithms to quantify structural degradation. We show that TDA effectively compresses geometric structure from VFM-segmented components into discriminative feature vectors and that anomaly detection models can reliably distinguish components with varying damage severity using only 3D PCD inputs. In the 2D projection analysis algorithm, we leverage large VFMs for granular damage detection by projecting 3D PCD into 2D views. These projections allow VFM based models to achieve competitive classification performance while requiring only a fraction of the computational cost associated with full 3D data processing. Our results demonstrate that 2D VFM pipelines in 2PDA can perform strongly on fine-grained damage classification tasks, highlighting their viability as lightweight, resource-efficient alternatives to traditional 3PDA architectures. Comparative evaluation shows that the 3PDA attains higher accuracy but only for a narrow subset of object geometries and at substantially higher computational cost due to its reliance on TDA and the scarcity of high-fidelity 3D datasets. In contrast, the 2PDA algorithm yields slightly lower accuracy but offers an order of magnitude reduction in time complexity and generalizes across a far broader range of object categories.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.08955
Advanced automated driving presents significant potential to improve modern automotive safety systems, but it depends highly on the reliable activation of restraint systems. Forward-looking sensors are crucial for immediate and precise object detection. Recent developments in automotive radar technology enable detailed environment detection and the recognition of high-resolution features, such as micro-Doppler signatures. Combined with advanced AI techniques, these features significantly enhance object detection and improve the accuracy of kinematic parameter estimation. This is essential for the early and reliable activation of irreversible safety systems, such as smart airbags and adaptive seat belts. Therefore, an anchor-based AI model is presented, designed to process high-resolution radar data with an explicit focus on micro-Doppler signatures to improve pre-crash object detection. Furthermore, these signatures can improve the accuracy of kinematic object parameter estimation and reduce false negatives, especially in the critical near-field. To address the challenges of sparse and fluctuating radar point clouds, an innovative radar-image dilation technique on the feature input channels was developed to amplify local radar patterns, like micro-Doppler features. Therefore, this approach increases the system's reliability and increases its ability to detect objects in pre-crash scenarios despite radar multipath reflections and ghost objects. In order to investigate the applicability and compare the model's performance with advanced automotive radar tracking methods, a radar data set using series sensors and pre-crash relevant scenarios was recorded. The results demonstrate the advantages of the anchor-based AI model over established tracking approaches. It excels at estimating object parameters in dynamic scenarios and underscores its ability to process different data sets effectively.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.08701
Point cloud completion commonly follows a coarse-to-fine paradigm, where a low-density coarse shape is first predicted and then upsampled to the target resolution. Although recent methods have improved global structure recovery, the fine stage often remains limited by simple upsampling and insufficient interaction with coarse structural features, making local detail reconstruction challenging. We propose SUMI, a diffusion-enhanced refinement module for coarse-to-fine point cloud completion. Unlike prior diffusion-based completion methods that use diffusion as a standalone point generator, SUMI injects noisy geometric features into cross-attention with coarse structural features, enabling reverse denoising to refine local geometry while preserving global consistency. SUMI can also be integrated into existing coarse-to-fine models as a flexible refinement module. Experiments on PCN, ShapeNet-55/34, and MVP demonstrate consistent improvements over strong baselines. SUMI achieves the best overall CD and F1-score on PCN, reduces CD by up to 16.1% on ShapeNet-55, and obtains the best CD across all output densities on MVP.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.08115
We present FlexSplat, a feed-forward framework for novel view synthesis (NVS) from uncalibrated, object-centric multi-view image collections. A recent line of query-based methods reconstructs a compact set of 3D Gaussians by treating them as transformer queries that are refined with multi-view deformable attention; these methods, however, assume that camera poses are given. FlexSplat removes this assumption: a geometry transformer is trained jointly with the Gaussian decoder to predict per-image camera parameters and depth, which in turn ground a depth-guided Gaussian parameterization and a multi-view deformable cross-attention that aggregates evidence across all input views into a single, view-consistent set of primitives. An uncertainty-weighted depth-consistency objective lets the jointly trained geometry adapt to the reconstruction task, while the cross-view consensus formed during decoding absorbs the residual error of the estimated cameras and depth. The representation uses a compact Gaussian budget that is decoupled from the input resolution - unlike pixel-aligned methods, the primitive count does not grow with the image grid - and is not dictated by the number of views. On ShapeNet-SRN and Google Scanned Objects (GSO), FlexSplat matches or approaches posed state-of-the-art reconstructors while requiring neither camera poses nor ground-truth depth, and matches the best perceptual (LPIPS) quality among the compared methods on GSO. Our results indicate that a jointly trained geometry front-end is sufficient to bring calibration-free operation to query-based Gaussian reconstruction while staying within 0.7 dB PSNR of posed methods and matching their perceptual quality.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.07937
3D scene understanding is increasingly important in construction, yet most methods are developed on curated datasets that do not fully reflect real site sensing conditions. In many workflows, individual LiDAR scans provide rapid local updates rather than complete scene representations, producing limited surface coverage, acquisition-driven density variation, and severe imbalance between dominant planar surfaces and sparse construction elements. Because large point clouds must be downsampled, sampling resolution and point allocation directly affect the balance between geometric detail and spatial context. This study evaluates these effects under a fixed per-fragment point budget and introduces an incidence-aware sampling strategy for individual LiDAR scans. The method maps points to a geometry-normalized manifold space for voxel-based selection while preserving original Euclidean coordinates for downstream learning. It requires only point coordinates and normals and no backbone modification. Using the Site in Pieces (SIP) benchmark, experiments with Point Transformer and PointNeXt show improved resolution-averaged segmentation performance, especially for non-planar elements and ladders, while reducing sensitivity to sampling resolution. The results show that acquisition-aware sampling can provide a more stable geometric representation and should be treated as an active component of individual-scan 3D segmentation rather than generic preprocessing.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.07757
Transformers have had a profound impact on the world of language processing and computer vision. As efforts to answer the million-dollar question of ``How does a Transformer learn?" have been increasing, existing interpretability studies primarily analyze representations at isolated layers or the network as a whole, while the developmental evolution of individual representations and its manifolds across transformer layers remains underexplored. With this work, we aim at providing a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of representations as the representation point cloud transforms across the layers; thereby attempting to isolate layers or establish a trend which comes closer to justifying how and when raw input representations evolve into task-relevant feature representations. Thus, Transformer Geometry Observatory-TGO-IV introduces a topological framework for analysing the evolution of Transformer representations through the lens of Persistent Homology. Rather than studying local geometric properties alone, TGO-IV constructs Vietoris--Rips simplicial complexes from token-level representation point clouds and investigates the evolution of their persistent topological signatures across Transformer layers. The proposed framework comprises complementary topological observatories including Persistence Diagrams, Barcode Diagrams, Betti Curves, Persistence Landscapes, Bottleneck Distance, and Wasserstein Distance, enabling a comprehensive analysis of how the global topology of representation point clouds develops throughout the forward pass.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.09997
Deploying three-dimensional deep learning frameworks to low-power embedded processors is bottlenecked by the unstructured nature of spatial data and the resource-intensive distance sorting algorithms often used before neural network inference. To address this gap, this paper presents a hardware-constrained workflow optimized for native execution on the Raspberry Pi 5. To account for the reality gap between noiseless, clean computer-aided design (CAD) datasets and real-world sensor data, we use physics-based simulation to construct a synthetic LiDAR dataset. Cross-dataset evaluations demonstrate a substantial drop in classification accuracy when networks trained on clean CAD data are evaluated on synthetic LiDAR sensor data, highlighting the critical need for sensor-aware training. To address the latency bottleneck of traditional geometric preprocessing on edge CPUs, we integrate an isolated, feature-driven Critical Points Layer (CPL) as a frontend filter. Our results show that the pretrained CPL deterministically compresses raw 1024-point clouds to a subset of 40 to 60 unique coordinates. When profiled on the ARM Cortex-A76 processor, the complete pipeline achieves an inference throughput of approximately 50 FPS while maintaining an instance classification accuracy of 88.36%, demonstrating the viability of deterministic real-time 3D perception at the edge.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.07106
Dense point cloud maps, as a typically used mapping representation, are difficult to deploy on resource-constrained robots because their memory consumption grows rapidly with scene scale. Although compact single-model representations reduce memory cost, their fixed geometric expressiveness is insufficient for structurally diverse environments. Existing multi-model methods improve representational flexibility, yet their feature extraction and model selection are often dominated by local geometry, which can cause overfitting and adhesion between objects. To address these issues, this paper presents M2-SMap, a memory-efficient semantic mapping framework based on hierarchical multi-model representation. First, a hierarchical geometric decomposition partitions RGB-D point clouds into compact Gaussian components. Then, a projection-guided semantic annotation mechanism assigns instance identities to each component. Subsequently, these annotations are incorporated into an object-aware Gaussian fusion strategy. Furthermore, a multi-scale feature extraction strategy separates large planar regions, semantic objects, and complex residual structures, which are respectively represented by bounded planes, object-level superquadrics, and GMM primitives. Experiments on three RGB-D sequences show that M2-SMap runs in real time at no less than 29.37 Hz while achieving the lowest primitive count, with an average reduction of 18.7% over the best baseline. It also reduces the mean per-frame number of measured inter-object adhesion cases from 2.808 to 0, demonstrating efficient and semantically consistent scene representation.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.07074
LiDAR serves as a primary sensing modality for robots operating in outdoor environments. However, the performance of deep learning models in this domain is severely limited by the scarcity of labeled data, a direct result of the high cost of 3D annotation. Self-supervised learning addresses this scarcity by learning general-purpose features from unlabeled data. In this work, we present a multi-modal, multi-teacher distillation framework for self-supervised learning on outdoor LiDAR point clouds. Building upon the Sonata architecture, we introduce Vernata, consisting of three extensions: sparse view augmentation to improve robustness against varying point densities, a memory bank mechanism to stabilize resource-constrained training, and cross-modal distillation utilizing dense, high-resolution 2D image features to enable fine-grained semantic guidance. We evaluate our method on the GrandTour, TartanGround, and Waymo datasets, as well as data collected from our own robotic platforms. Our experiments demonstrate a significant performance improvement over Sonata baselines, yielding mIoU scores of 54.7 on TartanGround (+5.9 points, +12.1%) and 57.1 on Waymo (+7.3 points, +14.7%). Finally, we show that the self-supervised approach maintains strong performance even in reduced-modality settings (lacking color or normals), achieving competitive mIoU scores of 49.4 and 50.2 on the respective datasets.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.06919
Mandibular reconstruction restores facial continuity and oral function after segmental resection. Patient-specific cutting guides transfer a computed tomography (CT)-based plan to the operating room with three-dimensional information, but printed guides add cost and lead time, cannot adapt after fabrication, and may interrupt surgery if sterility is lost. We investigate a markerless augmented reality (AR) alternative that registers a virtual cutting guide to the exposed mandible from surface geometry. The method extends surface-based registration for the transoral setting, where teeth form the most distinctive visible surface. After camera calibration, a HoloLens 2 time-of-flight camera captures a partial intraoperative point cloud. The user supplies a rough head-based alignment only to crop the region of interest. A teeth-weighted global stage computes correspondences and solves a truncated least-squares rigid alignment. An asymmetric point-to-plane iterative closest point (ICP) stage refines the complete CT mandible against the partial depth cloud target. The guide-to-mandible transform places the guide in the HoloLens world frame, while pose updates and interpolation follow target motion. We define a blinded phantom protocol with 30 target registration error (TRE) points under full, intermediate, and teeth-only exposure, plus a motion-to-display latency test. Our median TRE is 4.05, 6.10, and 7.10 mm respectively, and median latency is 0.805 s. These values support the feasibility of using AR to replace physical prints. The workflow removes mounted fiducials and manual landmark selection and provides a testable path toward transoral cutting guidance.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.06599
LiDAR-based Scene Coordinate Regression (SCR) maps point clouds directly to 3D scene coordinates, enabling precise 6-DoF localisation without explicit map retrieval. However, existing methods produce deterministic predictions, discarding aleatoric uncertainty that could improve robustness and downstream decision-making. We present UQ-Loc, which extends the LightLoc architecture with an anisotropic Gaussian covariance head that predicts a full 3x3 positive-definite covariance matrix per voxel. Training uses a Negative Log-Likelihood (NLL) loss augmented with a kNN-based spatial smoothness regulariser, while inference employs a modified SC2-PCR solver with uncertainty-weighted seed scoring and a Mahalanobis-distance inlier test. We adopt Expected Calibration Error (ECE) as a principled metric for evaluating the quality of the predicted uncertainty. Experiments demonstrate that UQ-Loc achieves consistent improvement in 6-DoF localization accuracy while producing well-calibrated covariances.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.06307
Contact-centric tasks on surfaces, ranging from inspection and cleaning to sanding and polishing, require robots to systematically cover the surface while maintaining stable contact. Ergodic control generates trajectories that spend time at a location proportional to a desired, task-specific spatial distribution, enabling efficient information gathering and coverage. However, traditional ergodic control methods rely on prior knowledge of surface geometry or require a vision sensory input to scan the geometry beforehand, limiting their applicability in real-world scenarios with unknown or dynamic environments. This paper introduces a novel online ergodic control framework that achieves systematic surface coverage while simultaneously reconstructing unknown surface geometry. We employ a Gaussian Process Implicit Surface (GPIS) model that learns global surface geometry from intrinsic tactile sensing during execution. For efficient online planning, we approximate the surface locally using point clouds sampled from tangent planes at observed contact points and iteratively fit them to the Gaussian Process. This approximation simultaneously serves as the sampling domain for both the target and the coverage distributions. We employ a heat-diffusion analogy to compute potential fields that guide ergodic exploration, translating spatial coverage objectives into smooth robot trajectories. We demonstrate our framework through simulation and real-robot experiments, validating simultaneous ergodic coverage and online surface geometry learning with reconstruction errors approaching the ground truth.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.06208
3D human registration has historically been treated as a regression task, assuming a unique ground-truth alignment exists between the template and an input point cloud. In reality, acquisition noise, occlusions, and unknown soft tissue dynamics introduce inherent ambiguity into human scans. Regression-based methods consequently converge to an average prediction, often failing to represent a plausible geometry. In our work, we embrace such uncertainty by modeling the registration as a distribution of alignments. We propose ODin, which formulates registration as a 3D diffusion process that generates a point cloud aligned with the target geometry while preserving template semantics through consistent point ordering. To achieve this, ODin relies on global, local, and positional conditioning, guiding each point to its correct location. Our experiments demonstrate that such a generative formulation not only outperforms its regression-based baseline, but also establishes a new state of the art, surpassing highly engineered methods while reducing the registration time by two-thirds. Pre-trained models and code are available at this https URL.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.05804
Joint-embedding predictive architectures learn by predicting latent representations of missing observations, yet many masked JEPAs are evaluated primarily through the encoders they produce. We ask what a trained predictive pathway itself infers when an entire entity is absent from a native 3D scene. We introduce SR-JEPA, a point-native JEPA for scene-scale point clouds whose original frozen predictive pathway can be queried at a supplied location. At evaluation, every point of one object is removed before encoding and replaced by the same shape-free 32-point query at its centroid. Training uses only self-contained 3D EMA targets: no reconstruction, semantic labels, language, or lifted 2D features. On 5,953 held-out ARKitScenes objects, the imputed latent reaches 43.13% semantic-identity macro accuracy, 22.18 points above the strongest floor. Randomizing the prediction path removes 9.78 points, while substituting matched donor context removes 21.98 points. On 8,570 Sr3D support pairs, the full latent reaches 41.15 AP; identity decoded from the missing-object latent, combined with anchor identity and geometry, reaches 39.37 AP, leaving an unresolved 1.78-point residual. These results reveal a queryable, compositional 3D predictive state: the model completes context-dependent entity content, which downstream computation combines with metric geometry.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.05774
Autonomous robot navigation requires the rapid generation of obstacle-free regions for trajectory planning. However, existing corridor generators struggle to meet real-time, sensor-rate computational constraints. To resolve this bottleneck, we introduce PathCover, a framework driven by RISP; a novel randomized algorithm that constructs convex polytopes directly from raw point cloud data in expected linear time under a mild probabilistic elimination condition. PathCover generates sequences of overlapping, obstacle-free polytopes that safely constrain downstream MPC and trajectory optimization. We mathematically guarantee that the algorithm terminates in finite steps while ensuring continuous progress along any obstacle-free reference path. Extensive benchmarks on synthetic and real-world LiDAR datasets demonstrate an order-of-magnitude speedup over state-of-the-art methods while maintaining comparable corridor volumes. The complete pipeline is validated via high-fidelity quadrotor simulations and physical deployment on a quadrupedal robot navigating constrained environments using live LiDAR perception.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.05586
Generating high-quality 3D point clouds requires capturing both global shape topology and local geometric details. Existing flow-based methods rely on continuous normalizing flows (CNFs) that demand expensive ODE solving and trace estimation during training, while diffusion models require hundreds of iterative denoising steps. Moreover, most approaches adopt single-level generation directly in point space, disregarding the hierarchical structure natural to 3D shapes. We propose Hierarchical Flow Matching (HFM) that extends flow matching to bilevel structure for unconditional 3D point cloud generation. HFM decomposes the task into two levels via optimal-transport flow matching: a \textit{Latent Flow Matching} models the global shape manifold in a compact latent space, and a \textit{Conditional Point Flow Matching} reconstructs detailed point clouds conditioned on the latent code. Both flows are trained with simple MSE regression losses. The resulting straight OT paths enable efficient sampling with as few as 15 Euler steps per flow, while the structured latent space supports downstream tasks including classification. Extensive experiments on ShapeNet and ModelNet benchmarks demonstrate that HFM achieves competitive or even best performance compared with prior state-of-the-art methods.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.05557
Modern image models provide strong cues about \emph{what} should be segmented in each view, but their masks do not by themselves determine \emph{where} those labels should persist in 3D. We present Cross-Domain Segmentation via Gaussian Splatting (CDSeg), a label-transfer interface that requires no task-specific 3D segmentation training and uses Gaussian primitives as a renderable label carrier. An external mask source supplies the labels, while renderer-derived visibility determines which 3D primitives receive them. The carrier is instantiated either by completing each input point into one Gaussian, preserving its index, or by reusing the native primitives of an optimized Gaussian scene. CDSeg records pixel--primitive associations during rendering and fuses multi-view masks through voting and a local filter. The resulting labels can be returned to the original points, retained on the native Gaussian scene, or rendered into other views. CDSeg covers promptable, automatic instance, semantic, and LiDAR settings and processes scenes with millions of primitives in seconds. It obtains 92.35\% mIoU on DesktopObjects-360, 95.89\% on NeRDS-360, and 65.77\% on the full ScanNet-v2 validation split using the provided 2D semantic annotations. CDSeg thereby provides one interface for reusing 2D masks across point clouds, Gaussian scenes, and image views without a task-specific 3D segmentation network.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.05482