# UncLe-SLAM: Uncertainty Learning for Dense Neural SLAM

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.11048 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11048/

## Key facts

- Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 84 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Jun 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [Occupancy Networks: Learning 3D Reconstruction in Function Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03828/) (2018)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [Learning Implicit Fields for Generative Shape Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02822/) (2018)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [ORB-SLAM3: An Accurate Open-Source Library for Visual, Visual-Inertial and Multi-Map SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11898/) (2020)
- [A Review of Uncertainty Quantification in Deep Learning: Techniques, Applications and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.06225/) (2020)
- [Convolutional Occupancy Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.04618/) (2020)
- [NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12130/) (2021)
- [Pyramid Stereo Matching Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.08669/) (2018)
- [iMAP: Implicit Mapping and Positioning in Real-Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12352/) (2021)
- [D3VO: Deep Depth, Deep Pose and Deep Uncertainty for Monocular Visual Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01060/) (2020)
- [On the uncertainty of self-supervised monocular depth estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.06209/) (2020)
- [NICER-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scene Encoding for RGB SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03594/) (2023)
- [ESLAM: Efficient Dense SLAM System Based on Hybrid Representation of Signed Distance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11704/) (2022)
- [Voxblox: Incremental 3D Euclidean Signed Distance Fields for On-Board MAV Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.03631/) (2016)
- [Vox-Fusion: Dense Tracking and Mapping with Voxel-based Neural Implicit Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.15858/) (2022)
- [DeepLiDAR: Deep Surface Normal Guided Depth Prediction for Outdoor Scene from Sparse LiDAR Data and Single Color Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00488/) (2018)
- [Estimating and Exploiting the Aleatoric Uncertainty in Surface Normal Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.09881/) (2021)
- [SimpleRecon: 3D Reconstruction Without 3D Convolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.14743/) (2022)
- [Don't Forget The Past: Recurrent Depth Estimation from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.02613/) (2020)
- [DI-Fusion: Online Implicit 3D Reconstruction with Deep Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05551/) (2020)
- [RoutedFusion: Learning Real-time Depth Map Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.04388/) (2020)
- [NeuralFusion: Online Depth Fusion in Latent Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14791/) (2020)
- [Digging into Uncertainty in Self-supervised Multi-view Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.12966/) (2021)
- [Continual Neural Mapping: Learning An Implicit Scene Representation from Sequential Observations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05851/) (2021)
- [IronDepth: Iterative Refinement of Single-View Depth using Surface Normal and its Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03676/) (2022)
- [DeepC-MVS: Deep Confidence Prediction for Multi-View Stereo Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.00439/) (2019)
- [PSDF Fusion: Probabilistic Signed Distance Function for On-the-fly 3D Data Fusion and Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.11034/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 19 of 19)

- [SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02126/) (2023)
- [Gaussian-SLAM: Photo-realistic Dense SLAM with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10070/) (2023)
- [SLAM3R: Real-Time Dense Scene Reconstruction from Monocular RGB Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09401/) (2024)
- [NeRF On-the-go: Exploiting Uncertainty for Distractor-free NeRFs in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.18715/) (2024)
- [How NeRFs and 3D Gaussian Splatting are Reshaping SLAM: a Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13255/) (2024)
- [Splat-SLAM: Globally Optimized RGB-only SLAM with 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16544/) (2024)
- [CG-SLAM: Efficient Dense RGB-D SLAM in a Consistent Uncertainty-aware 3D Gaussian Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16095/) (2024)
- [LoopSplat: Loop Closure by Registering 3D Gaussian Splats](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.10154/) (2024)
- [Loopy-SLAM: Dense Neural SLAM with Loop Closures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09944/) (2024)
- [GlORIE-SLAM: Globally Optimized RGB-only Implicit Encoding Point Cloud SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19549/) (2024)
- [Neural Radiance Field in Autonomous Driving: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13816/) (2024)
- [Deep Visual Odometry with Events and Frames](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09947/) (2023)
- [SEGS-SLAM: Structure-enhanced 3D Gaussian Splatting SLAM with Appearance Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05242/) (2025)
- [GS-LIVO: Real-Time LiDAR, Inertial, and Visual Multi-sensor Fused Odometry with Gaussian Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.08672/) (2025)
- [Uni-SLAM: Uncertainty-Aware Neural Implicit SLAM for Real-Time Dense Indoor Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00242/) (2024)
- [VarSplat: Uncertainty-aware 3D Gaussian Splatting for Robust RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.09673/) (2026)
- [Deblur Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12572/) (2025)
- [SGAD-SLAM: Splatting Gaussians at Adjusted Depth for Better Radiance Fields in RGBD SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21055/) (2026)
- [Learning Visual Information Utility with PIXER](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.13151/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present an uncertainty learning framework for dense neural simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). Estimating pixel-wise uncertainties for the depth input of dense SLAM methods allows re-weighing the tracking and mapping losses towards image regions that contain more suitable information that is more reliable for SLAM. To this end, we propose an online framework for sensor uncertainty estimation that can be trained in a self-supervised manner from only 2D input data. We further discuss the advantages of the uncertainty learning for the case of multi-sensor input. Extensive analysis, experimentation, and ablations show that our proposed modeling paradigm improves both mapping and tracking accuracy and often performs better than alternatives that require ground truth depth or 3D. Our experiments show that we achieve a 38% and 27% lower absolute trajectory tracking error (ATE) on the 7-Scenes and TUM-RGBD datasets respectively. On the popular Replica dataset using two types of depth sensors, we report an 11% F1-score improvement on RGBD SLAM compared to the recent state-of-the-art neural implicit approaches. Source code: https://github.com/kev-in-ta/UncLe-SLAM.