# Open-Fusion: Real-time Open-Vocabulary 3D Mapping and Queryable Scene Representation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.03923 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.03923/

## Key facts

- Cited by 54 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 29 of its 34 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 5 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 29 of 29)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.10084/) (2019)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [Grad-CAM: Visual Explanations from Deep Networks via Gradient-based Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02391/) (2016)
- [BLIP-2: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training with Frozen Image Encoders and Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.12597/) (2023)
- [BLIP: Bootstrapping Language-Image Pre-training for Unified Vision-Language Understanding and Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12086/) (2022)
- [Scaling Up Visual and Vision-Language Representation Learning With Noisy Text Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.05918/) (2021)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [Grounded Language-Image Pre-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03857/) (2021)
- [Open-vocabulary Object Detection via Vision and Language Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.13921/) (2021)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [Language-driven Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03546/) (2022)
- [RegionCLIP: Region-based Language-Image Pretraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.09106/) (2021)
- [Detecting Twenty-thousand Classes using Image-level Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.02605/) (2022)
- [Extract Free Dense Labels from CLIP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01071/) (2021)
- [Segment Everything Everywhere All at Once](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06718/) (2023)
- [LERF: Language Embedded Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09553/) (2023)
- [Open-Vocabulary Panoptic Segmentation with Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04803/) (2023)
- [Visual Language Maps for Robot Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.05714/) (2022)
- [ConceptFusion: Open-set Multimodal 3D Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07241/) (2023)
- [GLIPv2: Unifying Localization and Vision-Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.05836/) (2022)
- [CoWs on Pasture: Baselines and Benchmarks for Language-Driven Zero-Shot Object Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10421/) (2022)
- [Unified Contrastive Learning in Image-Text-Label Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03610/) (2022)
- [Semantic-SAM: Segment and Recognize Anything at Any Granularity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04767/) (2023)
- [CLIP-Fields: Weakly Supervised Semantic Fields for Robotic Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.05663/) (2022)
- [Open-vocabulary Queryable Scene Representations for Real World Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.09874/) (2022)
- [Semantic Abstraction: Open-World 3D Scene Understanding from 2D Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.11514/) (2022)
- [Hierarchical Open-vocabulary Universal Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00764/) (2023)
- [Indoor Scene Understanding in 2.5/3D for Autonomous Agents: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.03352/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 54)

- [Toward General-Purpose Robots via Foundation Models: A Survey and Meta-Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08782/) (2023)
- [3D-Mem: 3D Scene Memory for Embodied Exploration and Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17735/) (2024)
- [Real-World Robot Applications of Foundation Models: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.05741/) (2024)
- [MaskClustering: View Consensus based Mask Graph Clustering for Open-Vocabulary 3D Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07745/) (2024)
- [When LLMs step into the 3D World: A Survey and Meta-Analysis of 3D Tasks via Multi-modal Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10255/) (2024)
- [Multimodal Fusion and Vision-Language Models: A Survey for Robot Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02477/) (2025)
- [Beyond Bare Queries: Open-Vocabulary Object Grounding with 3D Scene Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.07113/) (2024)
- [Neural Fields in Robotics: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20220/) (2024)
- [Rethinking Progression of Memory State in Robotic Manipulation: An Object-Centric Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.11478/) (2025)
- [Describe Anything Anywhere At Any Moment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00565/) (2025)
- [One Map to Find Them All: Real-time Open-Vocabulary Mapping for Zero-shot Multi-Object Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.11764/) (2024)
- [Open-Vocabulary Online Semantic Mapping for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15043/) (2024)
- [OnlineAnySeg: Online Zero-Shot 3D Segmentation by Visual Foundation Model Guided 2D Mask Merging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.01309/) (2025)
- [KeySG: Hierarchical Keyframe-Based 3D Scene Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.01049/) (2025)
- [GaussianGraph: 3D Gaussian-based Scene Graph Generation for Open-world Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04034/) (2025)
- [FindAnything: Open-Vocabulary and Object-Centric Mapping for Robot Exploration in Any Environment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.08603/) (2025)
- [R2-Bench: Benchmarking the Robustness of Referring Perception Models under Perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.04924/) (2024)
- [OpenGS-Fusion: Open-Vocabulary Dense Mapping with Hybrid 3D Gaussian Splatting for Refined Object-Level Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.01150/) (2025)
- [RAG-3DSG: Enhancing 3D Scene Graphs with Re-Shot Guided Retrieval-Augmented Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10168/) (2026)
- [Zero-shot Object-Centric Instruction Following: Integrating Foundation Models with Traditional Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.07848/) (2024)
- [CuriousBot: Interactive Mobile Exploration via Actionable 3D Relational Object Graph](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13338/) (2025)
- [Semantic Consistent Language Gaussian Splatting for Point-Level Open-vocabulary Querying](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.21767/) (2025)
- [OVI-MAP:Open-Vocabulary Instance-Semantic Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26541/) (2026)
- [TESGNN: Temporal Equivariant Scene Graph Neural Networks for Efficient and Robust Multi-View 3D Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10509/) (2024)
- [OpenFusion++: An Open-vocabulary Real-time Scene Understanding System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.19266/) (2025)
- [OSMa-Bench: Evaluating Open Semantic Mapping Under Varying Lighting Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.10331/) (2025)
- [FreeQ-Graph: Free-form Querying with Semantic Consistent Scene Graph for 3D Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.13629/) (2025)
- [CORE-3D: Context-aware Open-vocabulary Retrieval by Embeddings in 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24528/) (2025)
- [ProFuse: Efficient Cross-View Context Fusion for Open-Vocabulary 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04754/) (2026)
- [OnlinePG: Online Open-Vocabulary Panoptic Mapping with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18510/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Precise 3D environmental mapping is pivotal in robotics. Existing methods often rely on predefined concepts during training or are time-intensive when generating semantic maps. This paper presents Open-Fusion, a groundbreaking approach for real-time open-vocabulary 3D mapping and queryable scene representation using RGB-D data. Open-Fusion harnesses the power of a pre-trained vision-language foundation model (VLFM) for open-set semantic comprehension and employs the Truncated Signed Distance Function (TSDF) for swift 3D scene reconstruction. By leveraging the VLFM, we extract region-based embeddings and their associated confidence maps. These are then integrated with 3D knowledge from TSDF using an enhanced Hungarian-based feature-matching mechanism. Notably, Open-Fusion delivers outstanding annotation-free 3D segmentation for open-vocabulary without necessitating additional 3D training. Benchmark tests on the ScanNet dataset against leading zero-shot methods highlight Open-Fusion's superiority. Furthermore, it seamlessly combines the strengths of region-based VLFM and TSDF, facilitating real-time 3D scene comprehension that includes object concepts and open-world semantics. We encourage the readers to view the demos on our project page: https://uark-aicv.github.io/OpenFusion