# Explain What You See: Open-Ended Segmentation and Recognition of Occluded 3D Objects

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.07037 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07037/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 9 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Jan 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [PointCNN: Convolution On X-Transformed Points](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07791/) (2018)
- [3D Semantic Segmentation with Submanifold Sparse Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10275/) (2017)
- [PartNet: A Large-scale Benchmark for Fine-grained and Hierarchical Part-level 3D Object Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02713/) (2018)
- [SPLATNet: Sparse Lattice Networks for Point Cloud Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.08275/) (2018)
- [Point Convolutional Neural Networks by Extension Operators](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.10091/) (2018)
- [PartNet: A Recursive Part Decomposition Network for Fine-grained and Hierarchical Shape Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.00709/) (2019)
- [Data-Driven Shape Analysis and Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.06686/) (2015)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [SpArX: Sparse Argumentative Explanations for Neural Networks [Technical Report]](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.09559/) (2023)
- [ProtoArgNet: Interpretable Image Classification with Super-Prototypes and Argumentation [Technical Report]](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15438/) (2023)
- [Polaris: Open-ended Interactive Robotic Manipulation via Syn2Real Visual Grounding and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.07975/) (2024)
- [Argumentative Debates for Transparent Bias Detection [Technical Report]](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.04511/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Local-HDP (for Local Hierarchical Dirichlet Process) is a hierarchical Bayesian method that has recently been used for open-ended 3D object category recognition. This method has been proven to be efficient in real-time robotic applications. However, the method is not robust to a high degree of occlusion. We address this limitation in two steps. First, we propose a novel semantic 3D object-parts segmentation method that has the flexibility of Local-HDP. This method is shown to be suitable for open-ended scenarios where the number of 3D objects or object parts is not fixed and can grow over time. We show that the proposed method has a higher percentage of mean intersection over union, using a smaller number of learning instances. Second, we integrate this technique with a recently introduced argumentation-based online incremental learning method, thereby enabling the model to handle a high degree of occlusion. We show that the resulting model produces an explicit set of explanations for the 3D object category recognition task.