# PC-NeRF: Parent-Child Neural Radiance Fields under Partial Sensor Data Loss in Autonomous Driving Environments

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.00874 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.00874/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [Neural Sparse Voxel Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11571/) (2020)
- [Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05263/) (2022)
- [KiloNeRF: Speeding up Neural Radiance Fields with Thousands of Tiny MLPs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13744/) (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)
- [Mega-NeRF: Scalable Construction of Large-Scale NeRFs for Virtual Fly-Throughs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10703/) (2021)
- [Urban Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14643/) (2021)
- [BungeeNeRF: Progressive Neural Radiance Field for Extreme Multi-scale Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05504/) (2021)
- [DeRF: Decomposed Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12490/) (2020)
- [LENS: Localization enhanced by NeRF synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06558/) (2021)
- [OverlapTransformer: An Efficient and Rotation-Invariant Transformer Network for LiDAR-Based Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03397/) (2022)
- [Neural LiDAR Fields for Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.01643/) (2023)
- [NeurAR: Neural Uncertainty for Autonomous 3D Reconstruction with Implicit Neural Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10985/) (2022)
- [Synthetic Datasets for Autonomous Driving: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12205/) (2023)
- [LiDAR-NeRF: Novel LiDAR View Synthesis via Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.10406/) (2023)
- [SHINE-Mapping: Large-Scale 3D Mapping Using Sparse Hierarchical Implicit Neural Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02299/) (2022)
- [NeRF-LiDAR: Generating Realistic LiDAR Point Clouds with Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14811/) (2023)
- [NeRF-LOAM: Neural Implicit Representation for Large-Scale Incremental LiDAR Odometry and Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.10709/) (2023)
- [Neural Vector Fields: Implicit Representation by Explicit Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04341/) (2023)
- [LAMP 2.0: A Robust Multi-Robot SLAM System for Operation in Challenging Large-Scale Underground Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13135/) (2022)
- [IR-MCL: Implicit Representation-Based Online Global Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03113/) (2022)
- [NF-Atlas: Multi-Volume Neural Feature Fields for Large Scale LiDAR Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04624/) (2023)
- [Sketch Beautification: Learning Part Beautification and Structure Refinement for Sketches of Man-made Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05832/) (2023)

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

- [Towards Knowledge-driven Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.04316/) (2023)
- [AlignMiF: Geometry-Aligned Multimodal Implicit Field for LiDAR-Camera Joint Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.17483/) (2024)
- [Bayesian NeRF: Quantifying Uncertainty with Volume Density for Neural Implicit Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06727/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Reconstructing large-scale 3D scenes is essential for autonomous vehicles, especially when partial sensor data is lost. Although the recently developed neural radiance fields (NeRF) have shown compelling results in implicit representations, the large-scale 3D scene reconstruction using partially lost LiDAR point cloud data still needs to be explored. To bridge this gap, we propose a novel 3D scene reconstruction framework called parent-child neural radiance field (PC-NeRF). The framework comprises two modules, the parent NeRF and the child NeRF, to simultaneously optimize scene-level, segment-level, and point-level scene representations. Sensor data can be utilized more efficiently by leveraging the segment-level representation capabilities of child NeRFs, and an approximate volumetric representation of the scene can be quickly obtained even with limited observations. With extensive experiments, our proposed PC-NeRF is proven to achieve high-precision 3D reconstruction in large-scale scenes. Moreover, PC-NeRF can effectively tackle situations where partial sensor data is lost and has high deployment efficiency with limited training time. Our approach implementation and the pre-trained models will be available at https://github.com/biter0088/pc-nerf.