mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Where is your place, Visual Place Recognition?

arXiv 2103.06443 ↗First posted 11 Mar 2021cs.RO cs.AI cs.CVcited by 82

Not on the map. Why?

Abstract (arXiv)

Visual Place Recognition (VPR) is often characterized as being able to recognize the same place despite significant changes in appearance and viewpoint. VPR is a key component of Spatial Artificial Intelligence, enabling robotic platforms and intelligent augmentation platforms such as augmented reality devices to perceive and understand the physical world. In this paper, we observe that there are three "drivers" that impose requirements on spatially intelligent agents and thus VPR systems: 1) the particular agent including its sensors and computational resources, 2) the operating environment of this agent, and 3) the specific task that the artificial agent carries out. In this paper, we characterize and survey key works in the VPR area considering those drivers, including their place representation and place matching choices. We also provide a new definition of VPR based on the visual overlap -- akin to spatial view cells in the brain -- that enables us to find similarities and differences to other research areas in the robotics and computer vision fields. We identify numerous open challenges and suggest areas that require more in-depth attention in future works.

Key facts. Cited by 82 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 50 of its 130 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 Mar 2021.

Builds on

50 of 130 references.

References · 50

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  2. 2017Graph Attention Networkscited by 8,854
  3. 2019SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networkscited by 1,437
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  11. 2020VPR-Bench: An Open-Source Visual Place Recognition Evaluation Framework with Quantifiable Viewpoint and Appearance Changecited by 101
  12. 2017Deep Learning Features at Scale for Visual Place Recognitioncited by 96
38 more
  1. 2015On the Performance of ConvNet Features for Place Recognitioncited by 72
  2. 2015Aggregating Deep Convolutional Features for Image Retrievalcited by 63
  3. 2019TriMap: Large-scale Dimensionality Reduction Using Tripletscited by 59
  4. 2021Semantics for Robotic Mapping, Perception and Interaction: A Surveycited by 56
  5. 2021SeqNet: Learning Descriptors for Sequence-based Hierarchical Place Recognitioncited by 56
  6. 2017X-View: Graph-Based Semantic Multi-View Localizationcited by 43
  7. 2019Scalable Place Recognition Under Appearance Change for Autonomous Drivingcited by 42
  8. 2020Benchmarking Image Retrieval for Visual Localizationcited by 42
  9. 2018Detect-to-Retrieve: Efficient Regional Aggregation for Image Searchcited by 39
  10. 2019Multi-Process Fusion: Visual Place Recognition Using Multiple Image Processing Methodscited by 38
  11. 2018FutureMapping: The Computational Structure of Spatial AI Systemscited by 35
  12. 2020Event-based visual place recognition with ensembles of temporal windowscited by 35
  13. 2018LoST? Appearance-Invariant Place Recognition for Opposite Viewpoints using Visual Semanticscited by 34
  14. 2020DenserNet: Weakly Supervised Visual Localization Using Multi-scale Feature Aggregationcited by 33
  15. 2014Convolutional Neural Network-based Place Recognitioncited by 32
  16. 2018Adversarial Training for Adverse Conditions: Robust Metric Localisation using Appearance Transfercited by 25
  17. 2018Don't Look Back: Robustifying Place Categorization for Viewpoint- and Condition-Invariant Place Recognitioncited by 21
  18. 2019Localizing Discriminative Visual Landmarks for Place Recognitioncited by 21
  19. 2020Delta Descriptors: Change-Based Place Representation for Robust Visual Localizationcited by 21
  20. 2020Single-Image Depth Prediction Makes Feature Matching Easiercited by 21
  21. 2018Local Descriptor for Robust Place Recognition using LiDAR Intensitycited by 19
  22. 2019Condition-Invariant Multi-View Place Recognitioncited by 18
  23. 2020UR2KiD: Unifying Retrieval, Keypoint Detection, and Keypoint Description without Local Correspondence Supervisioncited by 17
  24. 2020Intelligent Reference Curation for Visual Place Recognition via Bayesian Selective Fusioncited by 17
  25. 2020Predicting Visual Overlap of Images Through Interpretable Non-Metric Box Embeddingscited by 16
  26. 2019A Hybrid Compact Neural Architecture for Visual Place Recognitioncited by 15
  27. 2020Unsupervised Learning Methods for Visual Place Recognition in Discretely and Continuously Changing Environmentscited by 14
  28. 2020Fast and Robust Bio-inspired Teach and Repeat Navigationcited by 13
  29. 2020Unifying Deep Local and Global Features for Image Searchcited by 12
  30. 2020Fast, Compact and Highly Scalable Visual Place Recognition through Sequence-based Matching of Overloaded Representationscited by 10
  31. 2019Are State-of-the-art Visual Place Recognition Techniques any Good for Aerial Robotics?cited by 9
  32. 2020LCD -- Line Clustering and Description for Place Recognitioncited by 9
  33. 2019Learning Matchable Image Transformations for Long-term Metric Visual Localizationcited by 8
  34. 2019Automatic Coverage Selection for Surface-Based Visual Localizationcited by 3
  35. 2019Slanted Stixels: A way to represent steep streetscited by 3
  36. 2020Early Bird: Loop Closures from Opposing Viewpoints for Perceptually-Aliased Indoor Environmentscited by 2
  37. 2020DeepMEL: Compiling Visual Multi-Experience Localization into a Deep Neural Networkcited by 1
  38. 2020Dark Reciprocal-Rank: Boosting Graph-Convolutional Self-Localization Network via Teacher-to-student Knowledge Transfercited by 1

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2021: 9; 2022: 15; 2023: 12; 2024: 23; 2025: 11; 2026: 12.

82 papers.

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  1. 2023AnyLoc: Towards Universal Visual Place Recognitioncited by 159
  2. 2023Optimal Transport Aggregation for Visual Place Recognitioncited by 151
  3. 2023R2Former: Unified Retrieval and Reranking Transformer for Place Recognitioncited by 102
  4. 2022Deep Visual Geo-localization Benchmarkcited by 83
  5. 2023Visual Place Recognition: A Tutorialcited by 31
  6. 2024SceneGraphLoc: Cross-Modal Coarse Visual Localization on 3D Scene Graphscited by 29
  7. 2024Close, But Not There: Boosting Geographic Distance Sensitivity in Visual Place Recognitioncited by 27
  8. 2024RoboHop: Segment-based Topological Map Representation for Open-World Visual Navigationcited by 25
  9. 2024General Place Recognition Survey: Towards Real-World Autonomycited by 23
  10. 2024Revisit Anything: Visual Place Recognition via Image Segment Retrievalcited by 19
  11. 2022How Many Events do You Need? Event-based Visual Place Recognition Using Sparse But Varying Pixelscited by 17
  12. 2021A Hierarchical Dual Model of Environment- and Place-Specific Utility for Visual Place Recognitioncited by 15
38 more
  1. 2024On the Estimation of Image-matching Uncertainty in Visual Place Recognitioncited by 15
  2. 2021Spiking Neural Networks for Visual Place Recognition via Weighted Neuronal Assignmentscited by 14
  3. 2022MultiRes-NetVLAD: Augmenting Place Recognition Training with Low-Resolution Imagerycited by 14
  4. 2021CrowdDriven: A New Challenging Dataset for Outdoor Visual Localizationcited by 13
  5. 2023U-BEV: Height-aware Bird's-Eye-View Segmentation and Neural Map-based Relocalizationcited by 13
  6. 2021AirLoop: Lifelong Loop Closure Detectioncited by 11
  7. 2022General Place Recognition Survey: Towards the Real-world Autonomy Agecited by 11
  8. 2022FE-Fusion-VPR: Attention-based Multi-Scale Network Architecture for Visual Place Recognition by Fusing Frames and Eventscited by 11
  9. 2024Enhancing Visual Place Recognition via Fast and Slow Adaptive Biasing in Event Camerascited by 10
  10. 2024EDTformer: An Efficient Decoder Transformer for Visual Place Recognitioncited by 10
  11. 2023Applications of Spiking Neural Networks in Visual Place Recognitioncited by 9
  12. 2025UniPR-3D: Towards Universal Visual Place Recognition with Visual Geometry Grounded Transformercited by 8
  13. 2022Ensembles of Compact, Region-specific & Regularized Spiking Neural Networks for Scalable Place Recognitioncited by 7
  14. 2024Unifying Local and Global Multimodal Features for Place Recognition in Aliased and Low-Texture Environmentscited by 7
  15. 2024MSSPlace: Multi-Sensor Place Recognition with Visual and Text Semanticscited by 7
  16. 2021Unsupervised Complementary-aware Multi-process Fusion for Visual Place Recognitioncited by 6
  17. 2025SegLocNet: Multimodal Localization Network for Autonomous Driving via Bird's-Eye-View Segmentationcited by 6
  18. 2021Probabilistic Appearance-Invariant Topometric Localization with New Place Awarenesscited by 5
  19. 2022Self-Supervised Domain Calibration and Uncertainty Estimation for Place Recognitioncited by 5
  20. 2023Deep Declarative Dynamic Time Warping for End-to-End Learning of Alignment Pathscited by 5
  21. 2023PanoVPR: Towards Unified Perspective-to-Equirectangular Visual Place Recognition via Sliding Windows across the Panoramic Viewcited by 5
  22. 2023Self-Supervised Learning for Place Representation Generalization across Appearance Changescited by 4
  23. 2024Explicit Interaction for Fusion-Based Place Recognitioncited by 4
  24. 2024Monocular Gaussian SLAM with Language Extended Loop Closurecited by 4
  25. 2024Visual place recognition for aerial imagery: A surveycited by 4
  26. 2025Ensemble-Based Event Camera Place Recognition Under Varying Illuminationcited by 4
  27. 2022Computer vision-based analysis of buildings and built environments: A systematic review of current approachescited by 3
  28. 2022Which country is this picture from? New data and methods for DNN-based country recognitioncited by 3
  29. 2022Boosting Performance of a Baseline Visual Place Recognition Technique by Predicting the Maximally Complementary Techniquecited by 3
  30. 2022GraffMatch: Global Matching of 3D Lines and Planes for Wide Baseline LiDAR Registrationcited by 3
  31. 2024Breaking the Frame: Visual Place Recognition by Overlap Predictioncited by 3
  32. 2024VLAD-BuFF: Burst-aware Fast Feature Aggregation for Visual Place Recognitioncited by 3
  33. 2025Image-Based Relocalization and Alignment for Long-Term Monitoring of Dynamic Underwater Environmentscited by 3
  34. 2021EchoVPR: Echo State Networks for Visual Place Recognitioncited by 2
  35. 2022ReF -- Rotation Equivariant Features for Local Feature Matchingcited by 2
  36. 2022Text Detection & Recognition in the Wild for Robot Localizationcited by 2
  37. 2023CoPR: Towards Accurate Visual Localization With Continuous Place-descriptor Regressioncited by 2
  38. 2024PoCo: Point Context Cluster for RGBD Indoor Place Recognitioncited by 2

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