# Learning Better Keypoints for Multi-Object 6DoF Pose Estimation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.07827 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07827/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 43 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Aug 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 43)

- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Improved Training of Wasserstein GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00028/) (2017)
- [Dynamic Graph CNN for Learning on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07829/) (2018)
- [OpenPose: Realtime Multi-Person 2D Pose Estimation using Part Affinity Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.08008/) (2018)
- [PoseCNN: A Convolutional Neural Network for 6D Object Pose Estimation in Cluttered Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00199/) (2017)
- [Depth-supervised NeRF: Fewer Views and Faster Training for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02791/) (2021)
- [CenterNet: Keypoint Triplets for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08189/) (2019)
- [PVNet: Pixel-wise Voting Network for 6DoF Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.11788/) (2018)
- [CosyPose: Consistent multi-view multi-object 6D pose estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08465/) (2020)
- [SSD-6D: Making RGB-based 3D detection and 6D pose estimation great again](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10006/) (2017)
- [BB8: A Scalable, Accurate, Robust to Partial Occlusion Method for Predicting the 3D Poses of Challenging Objects without Using Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.10896/) (2017)
- [Pix2Pose: Pixel-Wise Coordinate Regression of Objects for 6D Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07433/) (2019)
- [PVN3D: A Deep Point-wise 3D Keypoints Voting Network for 6DoF Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.04231/) (2019)
- [BOP Challenge 2020 on 6D Object Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.07378/) (2020)
- [OnePose: One-Shot Object Pose Estimation without CAD Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12257/) (2022)
- [GDRNPP: A Geometry-guided and Fully Learning-based Object Pose Estimator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12145/) (2021)
- [FFB6D: A Full Flow Bidirectional Fusion Network for 6D Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02242/) (2021)
- [FS-Net: Fast Shape-based Network for Category-Level 6D Object Pose Estimation with Decoupled Rotation Mechanism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.07054/) (2021)
- [Key.Net: Keypoint Detection by Handcrafted and Learned CNN Filters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.00889/) (2019)
- [GPV-Pose: Category-level Object Pose Estimation via Geometry-guided Point-wise Voting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07918/) (2022)
- [6-DoF Object Pose from Semantic Keypoints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04670/) (2017)
- [FS6D: Few-Shot 6D Pose Estimation of Novel Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14628/) (2022)
- [OSOP: A Multi-Stage One Shot Object Pose Estimation Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15533/) (2022)
- [Discovery of Latent 3D Keypoints via End-to-end Geometric Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03146/) (2018)
- [Self6D: Self-Supervised Monocular 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.06468/) (2020)
- [EPro-PnP: Generalized End-to-End Probabilistic Perspective-n-Points for Monocular Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12787/) (2023)
- [Making Deep Heatmaps Robust to Partial Occlusions for 3D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.03959/) (2018)
- [BOP Challenge 2022 on Detection, Segmentation and Pose Estimation of Specific Rigid Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13075/) (2023)
- [PL-SLAM: a Stereo SLAM System through the Combination of Points and Line Segments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.09479/) (2017)
- [HS-Pose: Hybrid Scope Feature Extraction for Category-level Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15743/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Pseudo-keypoint RKHS Learning for Self-supervised 6DoF Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.09500/) (2023)
- [Cov2Pose: Leveraging Spatial Covariance for Direct Manifold-aware 6-DoF Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19961/) (2026)
- [DLTPose: 6DoF Pose Estimation From Accurate Dense Surface Point Estimates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07335/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We address the problem of keypoint selection, and find that the performance of 6DoF pose estimation methods can be improved when pre-defined keypoint locations are learned, rather than being heuristically selected as has been the standard approach. We found that accuracy and efficiency can be improved by training a graph network to select a set of disperse keypoints with similarly distributed votes. These votes, learned by a regression network to accumulate evidence for the keypoint locations, can be regressed more accurately compared to previous heuristic keypoint algorithms. The proposed KeyGNet, supervised by a combined loss measuring both Wasserstein distance and dispersion, learns the color and geometry features of the target objects to estimate optimal keypoint locations. Experiments demonstrate the keypoints selected by KeyGNet improved the accuracy for all evaluation metrics of all seven datasets tested, for three keypoint voting methods. The challenging Occlusion LINEMOD dataset notably improved ADD(S) by +16.4% on PVN3D, and all core BOP datasets showed an AR improvement for all objects, of between +1% and +21.5%. There was also a notable increase in performance when transitioning from single object to multiple object training using KeyGNet keypoints, essentially eliminating the SISO-MIMO gap for Occlusion LINEMOD.