mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Past, Present, and Future of Simultaneous Localization And Mapping: Towards the Robust-Perception Age

arXiv 1606.05830 ↗First posted 19 Jun 2016cs.ROcited by 405

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM)consists in the concurrent construction of a model of the environment (the map), and the estimation of the state of the robot moving within it. The SLAM community has made astonishing progress over the last 30 years, enabling large-scale real-world applications, and witnessing a steady transition of this technology to industry. We survey the current state of SLAM. We start by presenting what is now the de-facto standard formulation for SLAM. We then review related work, covering a broad set of topics including robustness and scalability in long-term mapping, metric and semantic representations for mapping, theoretical performance guarantees, active SLAM and exploration, and other new frontiers. This paper simultaneously serves as a position paper and tutorial to those who are users of SLAM. By looking at the published research with a critical eye, we delineate open challenges and new research issues, that still deserve careful scientific investigation. The paper also contains the authors' take on two questions that often animate discussions during robotics conferences: Do robots need SLAM? and Is SLAM solved?

Key facts. Cited by 405 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). First posted on arXiv 19 Jun 2016.

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2020: 1; 2021: 71; 2022: 72; 2023: 48; 2024: 78; 2025: 72; 2026: 63.

405 papers.

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  1. 2024SpatialVLM: Endowing Vision-Language Models with Spatial Reasoning Capabilitiescited by 679
  2. 2021DROID-SLAM: Deep Visual SLAM for Monocular, Stereo, and RGB-D Camerascited by 673
  3. 2023LightGlue: Local Feature Matching at Light Speedcited by 583
  4. 2025Continuous 3D Perception Model with Persistent Statecited by 527
  5. 2023SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAMcited by 386
  6. 2021A Survey of Embodied AI: From Simulators to Research Taskscited by 256
  7. 2022Deep Patch Visual Odometrycited by 186
  8. 2023Optimal Transport Aggregation for Visual Place Recognitioncited by 151
  9. 2021Kimera: from SLAM to Spatial Perception with 3D Dynamic Scene Graphscited by 144
  10. 2024MV-DUSt3R+: Single-Stage Scene Reconstruction from Sparse Views In 2 Secondscited by 136
  11. 2025VGGT-SLAM: Dense RGB SLAM Optimized on the SL(4) Manifoldcited by 130
  12. 2024TRAM: Global Trajectory and Motion of 3D Humans from in-the-wild Videoscited by 105
38 more
  1. 2021Edge Artificial Intelligence for 6G: Vision, Enabling Technologies, and Applicationscited by 96
  2. 2021Where is your place, Visual Place Recognition?cited by 82
  3. 2021Endo-Depth-and-Motion: Reconstruction and Tracking in Endoscopic Videos using Depth Networks and Photometric Constraintscited by 80
  4. 2024How NeRFs and 3D Gaussian Splatting are Reshaping SLAM: a Surveycited by 72
  5. 2021SIMONe: View-Invariant, Temporally-Abstracted Object Representations via Unsupervised Video Decompositioncited by 69
  6. 2022DM-NeRF: 3D Scene Geometry Decomposition and Manipulation from 2D Imagescited by 69
  7. 2022Density-aware NeRF Ensembles: Quantifying Predictive Uncertainty in Neural Radiance Fieldscited by 58
  8. 2021Semantics for Robotic Mapping, Perception and Interaction: A Surveycited by 56
  9. 2024OmniGlue: Generalizable Feature Matching with Foundation Model Guidancecited by 55
  10. 2024TopViewRS: Vision-Language Models as Top-View Spatial Reasonerscited by 48
  11. 2021Learning to Map for Active Semantic Goal Navigationcited by 47
  12. 2021MultiBodySync: Multi-Body Segmentation and Motion Estimation via 3D Scan Synchronizationcited by 46
  13. 2025LONG3R: Long Sequence Streaming 3D Reconstructioncited by 45
  14. 2022Guaranteed Discovery of Control-Endogenous Latent States with Multi-Step Inverse Modelscited by 42
  15. 2023Dense RGB SLAM with Neural Implicit Mapscited by 42
  16. 2023BEVPlace: Learning LiDAR-based Place Recognition using Bird's Eye View Imagescited by 39
  17. 2022DEVO: Depth-Event Camera Visual Odometry in Challenging Conditionscited by 36
  18. 2024Dynamic 3D Gaussian Fields for Urban Areascited by 35
  19. 2021Differentiable SLAM-net: Learning Particle SLAM for Visual Navigationcited by 34
  20. 2021Quantum Permutation Synchronizationcited by 32
  21. 2022Uncertainty-driven Planner for Exploration and Navigationcited by 31
  22. 2024CMax-SLAM: Event-based Rotational-Motion Bundle Adjustment and SLAM System using Contrast Maximizationcited by 31
  23. 2022Graph Matching with Bi-level Noisy Correspondencecited by 30
  24. 2022ActiveRMAP: Radiance Field for Active Mapping And Planningcited by 29
  25. 2023Deep Event Visual Odometrycited by 29
  26. 2021Unsupervised Monocular Depth Estimation in Highly Complex Environmentscited by 28
  27. 2022SAGE: SLAM with Appearance and Geometry Prior for Endoscopycited by 28
  28. 2023Neural feels with neural fields: Visuo-tactile perception for in-hand manipulationcited by 28
  29. 2024NARUTO: Neural Active Reconstruction from Uncertain Target Observationscited by 27
  30. 2024Multi-Level Neural Scene Graphs for Dynamic Urban Environmentscited by 27
  31. 2024Close, But Not There: Boosting Geographic Distance Sensitivity in Visual Place Recognitioncited by 27
  32. 2021Self-supervised Geometric Perceptioncited by 26
  33. 2023Neural Implicit Dense Semantic SLAMcited by 26
  34. 2024Local Feature Matching Using Deep Learning: A Surveycited by 26
  35. 2021BVMatch: Lidar-based Place Recognition Using Bird's-eye View Imagescited by 25
  36. 2022CVLNet: Cross-View Semantic Correspondence Learning for Video-based Camera Localizationcited by 25
  37. 2024Compact 3D Gaussian Splatting For Dense Visual SLAMcited by 24
  38. 2024HI-SLAM2: Geometry-Aware Gaussian SLAM for Fast Monocular Scene Reconstructioncited by 24

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