# CLA-NeRF: Category-Level Articulated Neural Radiance Field

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.00181 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.00181/

## Key facts

- Cited by 59 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Feb 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [ShapeNet: An Information-Rich 3D Model Repository](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03012/) (2015)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [End-to-end Recovery of Human Shape and Pose](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06584/) (2017)
- [IBRNet: Learning Multi-View Image-Based Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.13090/) (2021)
- [Neural Body: Implicit Neural Representations with Structured Latent Codes for Novel View Synthesis of Dynamic Humans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15838/) (2020)
- [VIBE: Video Inference for Human Body Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.05656/) (2019)
- [SAPIEN: A SimulAted Part-based Interactive ENvironment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08515/) (2020)
- [PartNet: A Large-scale Benchmark for Fine-grained and Hierarchical Part-level 3D Object Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02713/) (2018)
- [Normalized Object Coordinate Space for Category-Level 6D Object Pose and Size Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02970/) (2019)
- [INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05877/) (2020)
- [Multi-Garment Net: Learning to Dress 3D People from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06903/) (2019)
- [Neural Articulated Radiance Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03110/) (2021)
- [Neural Body Fitting: Unifying Deep Learning and Model-Based Human Pose and Shape Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.05942/) (2018)
- [DeepHuman: 3D Human Reconstruction from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.06473/) (2019)
- [Category-Level Articulated Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.11913/) (2019)
- [Perceiving 3D Human-Object Spatial Arrangements from a Single Image in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.15649/) (2020)
- [A-SDF: Learning Disentangled Signed Distance Functions for Articulated Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.07645/) (2021)
- [ShaRF: Shape-conditioned Radiance Fields from a Single View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.08860/) (2021)
- [CAPTRA: CAtegory-level Pose Tracking for Rigid and Articulated Objects from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.03437/) (2021)
- [ScrewNet: Category-Independent Articulation Model Estimation From Depth Images Using Screw Theory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.10518/) (2020)
- [A Probabilistic Framework for Learning Kinematic Models of Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.7705/) (2014)
- [Learning Articulated Motions From Visual Demonstration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.01659/) (2015)
- [Factored Pose Estimation of Articulated Objects using Efficient Nonparametric Belief Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03647/) (2018)
- [Learning Hybrid Object Kinematics for Efficient Hierarchical Planning Under Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.09014/) (2019)
- [Toward Robust Long Range Policy Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02957/) (2021)
- [Meta-CPR: Generalize to Unseen Large Number of Agents with Communication Pattern Recognition Module](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07222/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 59)

- [PARIS: Part-level Reconstruction and Motion Analysis for Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07391/) (2023)
- [Full-Body Articulated Human-Object Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10621/) (2022)
- [ARNOLD: A Benchmark for Language-Grounded Task Learning With Continuous States in Realistic 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04321/) (2023)
- [Real2Code: Reconstruct Articulated Objects via Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08474/) (2024)
- [ArtGS: Building Interactable Replicas of Complex Articulated Objects via Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19459/) (2025)
- [Advances in 3D Generation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.17807/) (2024)
- [CARTO: Category and Joint Agnostic Reconstruction of ARTiculated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15782/) (2023)
- [Interactive Segmentation of Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.13545/) (2022)
- [CAGE: Controllable Articulation GEneration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.09570/) (2023)
- [ArticulatedGS: Self-supervised Digital Twin Modeling of Articulated Objects using 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08135/) (2025)
- [Recent Trends in 3D Reconstruction of General Non-Rigid Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15064/) (2024)
- [NAP: Neural 3D Articulation Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.16315/) (2023)
- [PhysPart: Physically Plausible Part Completion for Interactable Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.13724/) (2024)
- [Articulate your NeRF: Unsupervised articulated object modeling via conditional view synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.16623/) (2024)
- [Neural Fields in Robotics: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20220/) (2024)
- [DIPO: Dual-State Images Controlled Articulated Object Generation Powered by Diverse Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20460/) (2025)
- [FreeArt3D: Training-Free Articulated Object Generation using 3D Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.25765/) (2025)
- [Infinite Mobility: Scalable High-Fidelity Synthesis of Articulated Objects via Procedural Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.13424/) (2025)
- [iTACO: Interactable Digital Twins of Articulated Objects from Casually Captured RGBD Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.08334/) (2025)
- [NeRFs in Robotics: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01333/) (2024)
- [GaussianArt: Unified Modeling of Geometry and Motion for Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14891/) (2025)
- [LEIA: Latent View-invariant Embeddings for Implicit 3D Articulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06703/) (2024)
- [Simulating the Real World: A Unified Survey of Multimodal Generative Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04641/) (2025)
- [VideoArtGS: Building Digital Twins of Articulated Objects from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17647/) (2025)
- [Survey on Modeling of Human-made Articulated Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14937/) (2024)
- [SplArt: Articulation Estimation and Part-Level Reconstruction with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.03594/) (2025)
- [Detection Based Part-level Articulated Object Reconstruction from Single RGBD Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03177/) (2025)
- [LARM: A Large Articulated-Object Reconstruction Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.11563/) (2025)
- [CAPT: Category-level Articulation Estimation from a Single Point Cloud Using Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17360/) (2024)
- [ScrewSplat: An End-to-End Method for Articulated Object Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.02146/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We propose CLA-NeRF -- a Category-Level Articulated Neural Radiance Field that can perform view synthesis, part segmentation, and articulated pose estimation. CLA-NeRF is trained at the object category level using no CAD models and no depth, but a set of RGB images with ground truth camera poses and part segments. During inference, it only takes a few RGB views (i.e., few-shot) of an unseen 3D object instance within the known category to infer the object part segmentation and the neural radiance field. Given an articulated pose as input, CLA-NeRF can perform articulation-aware volume rendering to generate the corresponding RGB image at any camera pose. Moreover, the articulated pose of an object can be estimated via inverse rendering. In our experiments, we evaluate the framework across five categories on both synthetic and real-world data. In all cases, our method shows realistic deformation results and accurate articulated pose estimation. We believe that both few-shot articulated object rendering and articulated pose estimation open doors for robots to perceive and interact with unseen articulated objects.