# Fully Convolutional Geometric Features for Category-level Object Alignment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.04494 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04494/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 22 of its 37 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Mar 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [ShapeNet: An Information-Rich 3D Model Repository](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03012/) (2015)
- [4D Spatio-Temporal ConvNets: Minkowski Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08755/) (2019)
- [A Point Set Generation Network for 3D Object Reconstruction from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00603/) (2016)
- [ORB-SLAM2: an Open-Source SLAM System for Monocular, Stereo and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.06475/) (2016)
- [Open3D: A Modern Library for 3D Data Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09847/) (2018)
- [Normalized Object Coordinate Space for Category-Level 6D Object Pose and Size Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02970/) (2019)
- [PVNet: Pixel-wise Voting Network for 6DoF Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.11788/) (2018)
- [3DMatch: Learning Local Geometric Descriptors from RGB-D Reconstructions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.08182/) (2016)
- [TEASER: Fast and Certifiable Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07715/) (2020)
- [Fast Online Object Tracking and Segmentation: A Unifying Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05050/) (2018)
- [DPOD: 6D Pose Object Detector and Refiner](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.11020/) (2019)
- [PPFNet: Global Context Aware Local Features for Robust 3D Point Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02669/) (2018)
- [The Perfect Match: 3D Point Cloud Matching with Smoothed Densities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.06879/) (2018)
- [Scan2CAD: Learning CAD Model Alignment in RGB-D Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.11187/) (2018)
- [3DFeat-Net: Weakly Supervised Local 3D Features for Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.09413/) (2018)
- [6-DoF Object Pose from Semantic Keypoints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04670/) (2017)
- [StarMap for Category-Agnostic Keypoint and Viewpoint Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09331/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Optimal Pose and Shape Estimation for Category-level 3D Object Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08383/) (2021)
- [Optimal and Robust Category-level Perception: Object Pose and Shape Estimation from 2D and 3D Semantic Keypoints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.12498/) (2022)
- [Revisiting Fully Convolutional Geometric Features for Object 6D Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.15514/) (2023)
- [CORSAIR: Convolutional Object Retrieval and Symmetry-AIded Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06911/) (2021)
- [Accurate Instance-Level CAD Model Retrieval in a Large-Scale Database](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01339/) (2022)
- [Learning Point Cloud Representations with Pose Continuity for Depth-Based Category-Level 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14358/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper focuses on pose registration of different object instances from the same category. This is required in online object mapping because object instances detected at test time usually differ from the training instances. Our approach transforms instances of the same category to a normalized canonical coordinate frame and uses metric learning to train fully convolutional geometric features. The resulting model is able to generate pairs of matching points between the instances, allowing category-level registration. Evaluation on both synthetic and real-world data shows that our method provides robust features, leading to accurate alignment of instances with different shapes.