# Multi-Modal Neural Radiance Field for Monocular Dense SLAM with a Light-Weight ToF Sensor

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.14383 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.14383/

## Key facts

- Cited by 30 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 30 of its 46 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Aug 2023.

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

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (2021)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09517/) (2022)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [Neural Sparse Voxel Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11571/) (2020)
- [ORB-SLAM3: An Accurate Open-Source Library for Visual, Visual-Inertial and Multi-Map SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11898/) (2020)
- [NeRF++: Analyzing and Improving Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.07492/) (2020)
- [ORB-SLAM2: an Open-Source SLAM System for Monocular, Stereo and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.06475/) (2016)
- [DROID-SLAM: Deep Visual SLAM for Monocular, Stereo, and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10869/) (2021)
- [BARF: Bundle-Adjusting Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06405/) (2021)
- [NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12130/) (2021)
- [iMAP: Implicit Mapping and Positioning in Real-Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12352/) (2021)
- [MonoSDF: Exploring Monocular Geometric Cues for Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00665/) (2022)
- [Neural Geometric Level of Detail: Real-time Rendering with Implicit 3D Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10994/) (2021)
- [INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05877/) (2020)
- [Neural RGB-D Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.04532/) (2021)
- [NeuralRecon: Real-Time Coherent 3D Reconstruction from Monocular Video](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00681/) (2021)
- [Learning Object-Compositional Neural Radiance Field for Editable Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01847/) (2021)
- [DeepV2D: Video to Depth with Differentiable Structure from Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04605/) (2018)
- [CodeSLAM - Learning a Compact, Optimisable Representation for Dense Visual SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00874/) (2018)
- [NeuMesh: Learning Disentangled Neural Mesh-based Implicit Field for Geometry and Texture Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.11911/) (2022)
- [DeepFactors: Real-Time Probabilistic Dense Monocular SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.05049/) (2020)
- [iSDF: Real-Time Neural Signed Distance Fields for Robot Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.02296/) (2022)
- [GO-Surf: Neural Feature Grid Optimization for Fast, High-Fidelity RGB-D Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14735/) (2022)
- [PATS: Patch Area Transportation with Subdivision for Local Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07700/) (2023)
- [DELTAR: Depth Estimation from a Light-weight ToF Sensor and RGB Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13362/) (2022)

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

- [How NeRFs and 3D Gaussian Splatting are Reshaping SLAM: a Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.13255/) (2024)
- [CG-SLAM: Efficient Dense RGB-D SLAM in a Consistent Uncertainty-aware 3D Gaussian Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16095/) (2024)
- [VLM-Grounder: A VLM Agent for Zero-Shot 3D Visual Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13860/) (2024)
- [GlORIE-SLAM: Globally Optimized RGB-only Implicit Encoding Point Cloud SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19549/) (2024)
- [CP-SLAM: Collaborative Neural Point-based SLAM System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.08013/) (2023)
- [Neural Radiance Field in Autonomous Driving: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13816/) (2024)
- [Exploring Multi-modal Neural Scene Representations With Applications on Thermal Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11865/) (2024)
- [Towards 3D Vision with Low-Cost Single-Photon Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17801/) (2024)
- [BlinkVision: A Benchmark for Optical Flow, Scene Flow and Point Tracking Estimation using RGB Frames and Events](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20451/) (2024)
- [Learning Neural Implicit through Volume Rendering with Attentive Depth Fusion Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11598/) (2023)
- [RGB Guided ToF Imaging System: A Survey of Deep Learning-based Methods](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10357/) (2024)
- [VTGaussian-SLAM: RGBD SLAM for Large Scale Scenes with Splatting View-Tied 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.02741/) (2025)
- [Hi-Map: Hierarchical Factorized Radiance Field for High-Fidelity Monocular Dense Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03203/) (2024)
- [ETO:Efficient Transformer-based Local Feature Matching by Organizing Multiple Homography Hypotheses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.22733/) (2024)
- [BlinkTrack: Feature Tracking over 80 FPS via Events and Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17981/) (2024)
- [CFPNet: Improving Lightweight ToF Depth Completion via Cross-zone Feature Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04480/) (2024)
- [ARMOR: Egocentric Perception for Humanoid Robot Collision Avoidance and Motion Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.00396/) (2024)
- [Using a Distance Sensor to Detect Deviations in a Planar Surface](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03838/) (2024)
- [A Global Depth-Range-Free Multi-View Stereo Transformer Network with Pose Embedding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.01893/) (2024)
- [MultimodalStudio: A Heterogeneous Sensor Dataset and Framework for Neural Rendering across Multiple Imaging Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.19673/) (2025)
- [DEPTHOR: Depth Enhancement from a Practical Light-Weight dToF Sensor and RGB Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.01596/) (2025)
- [Recovering Parametric Scenes from Very Few Time-of-Flight Pixels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16132/) (2025)
- [3DDX: Bone Surface Reconstruction from a Single Standard-Geometry Radiograph via Dual-Face Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.16702/) (2024)
- [CoProSketch: Controllable and Progressive Sketch Generation with Diffusion Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.08259/) (2025)
- [CAD-SLAM: Consistency-Aware Dynamic SLAM with Dynamic-Static Decoupled Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19420/) (2025)
- [Reconstruction Using the Invisible: Intuition from NIR and Metadata for Enhanced 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.14443/) (2025)
- [DEPTHOR++: Robust Depth Enhancement from a Real-World Lightweight dToF and RGB Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26498/) (2025)
- [SGAD-SLAM: Splatting Gaussians at Adjusted Depth for Better Radiance Fields in RGBD SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.21055/) (2026)
- [OpticFusion: Multi-Modal Neural Implicit 3D Reconstruction of Microstructures by Fusing White Light Interferometry and Optical Microscopy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.09259/) (2025)
- [ToF-Splatting: Dense SLAM using Sparse Time-of-Flight Depth and Multi-Frame Integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.16545/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Light-weight time-of-flight (ToF) depth sensors are compact and cost-efficient, and thus widely used on mobile devices for tasks such as autofocus and obstacle detection. However, due to the sparse and noisy depth measurements, these sensors have rarely been considered for dense geometry reconstruction. In this work, we present the first dense SLAM system with a monocular camera and a light-weight ToF sensor. Specifically, we propose a multi-modal implicit scene representation that supports rendering both the signals from the RGB camera and light-weight ToF sensor which drives the optimization by comparing with the raw sensor inputs. Moreover, in order to guarantee successful pose tracking and reconstruction, we exploit a predicted depth as an intermediate supervision and develop a coarse-to-fine optimization strategy for efficient learning of the implicit representation. At last, the temporal information is explicitly exploited to deal with the noisy signals from light-weight ToF sensors to improve the accuracy and robustness of the system. Experiments demonstrate that our system well exploits the signals of light-weight ToF sensors and achieves competitive results both on camera tracking and dense scene reconstruction. Project page: urlhttps://zju3dv.github.io/tofslam/.