# SE(3) Diffusion Model-based Point Cloud Registration for Robust 6D Object Pose Estimation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.17359 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17359/

## Key facts

- Cited by 33 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in 3D, point cloud and scene generation, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 41 of its 66 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Oct 2023.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [3D, point cloud and scene generation](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/3d-point-cloud-and-scene-generation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Score-Based Generative Modeling through Stochastic Differential Equations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13456/) (2020)
- [Deep Unsupervised Learning using Nonequilibrium Thermodynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.03585/) (2015)
- [Generative Modeling by Estimating Gradients of the Data Distribution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.05600/) (2019)
- [Improved Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09672/) (2021)
- [PoseCNN: A Convolutional Neural Network for 6D Object Pose Estimation in Cluttered Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00199/) (2017)
- [Multi-View 3D Object Detection Network for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07759/) (2016)
- [PVNet: Pixel-wise Voting Network for 6DoF Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.11788/) (2018)
- [Deep Closest Point: Learning Representations for Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03304/) (2019)
- [CosyPose: Consistent multi-view multi-object 6D pose estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.08465/) (2020)
- [DeepIM: Deep Iterative Matching for 6D Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.00175/) (2018)
- [TEASER: Fast and Certifiable Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07715/) (2020)
- [BOP: Benchmark for 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.08319/) (2018)
- [SSD-6D: Making RGB-based 3D detection and 6D pose estimation great again](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10006/) (2017)
- [Deep Object Pose Estimation for Semantic Robotic Grasping of Household Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.10790/) (2018)
- [PointNetLK: Robust & Efficient Point Cloud Registration using PointNet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.05711/) (2019)
- [Deep Global Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11540/) (2020)
- [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)
- [Real-Time Seamless Single Shot 6D Object Pose Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08848/) (2017)
- [DPOD: 6D Pose Object Detector and Refiner](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.11020/) (2019)
- [RPM-Net: Robust Point Matching using Learned Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13479/) (2020)
- [PointFusion: Deep Sensor Fusion for 3D Bounding Box Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10871/) (2017)
- [Implicit 3D Orientation Learning for 6D Object Detection from RGB Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.01275/) (2019)
- [PRNet: Self-Supervised Learning for Partial-to-Partial Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.12240/) (2019)
- [SE(3)-DiffusionFields: Learning smooth cost functions for joint grasp and motion optimization through diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03855/) (2022)
- [Feature-metric Registration: A Fast Semi-supervised Approach for Robust Point Cloud Registration without Correspondences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.01014/) (2020)
- [Robust Point Cloud Registration Framework Based on Deep Graph Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.04256/) (2021)
- [3DRegNet: A Deep Neural Network for 3D Point Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01701/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [Deep Learning-Based Object Pose Estimation: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.07801/) (2024)
- [ET-SEED: Efficient Trajectory-Level SE(3) Equivariant Diffusion Policy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.03990/) (2024)
- [6D-Diff: A Keypoint Diffusion Framework for 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00029/) (2023)
- [VORTA: Efficient Video Diffusion via Routing Sparse Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.18809/) (2025)
- [Diff9D: Diffusion-Based Domain-Generalized Category-Level 9-DoF Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02525/) (2025)
- [Rectified Point Flow: Generic Point Cloud Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05282/) (2025)
- [DiffuMatch: Category-Agnostic Spectral Diffusion Priors for Robust Non-rigid Shape Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.23715/) (2025)
- [Advancing 3D Point Cloud Understanding through Deep Transfer Learning: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17877/) (2024)
- [Register Any Point: Scaling 3D Point Cloud Registration by Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.01850/) (2025)
- [DiffSF: Diffusion Models for Scene Flow Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.05327/) (2024)
- [VGGT-360: Geometry-Consistent Zero-Shot Panoramic Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18943/) (2026)
- [Diff-Reg v1: Diffusion Matching Model for Registration Problem](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19919/) (2024)
- [FUSER: Feed-Forward MUltiview 3D Registration Transformer and SE(3)N Diffusion Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.09373/) (2025)
- [Incremental Multiview Point Cloud Registration with Two-stage Candidate Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.07525/) (2024)
- [Denoising Diffusion Planner: Learning Complex Paths from Low-Quality Demonstrations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21497/) (2024)
- [3D Registration in 30 Years: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13735/) (2024)
- [Equivariant Flow Matching for Point Cloud Assembly](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21539/) (2025)
- [MonoSE(3)-Diffusion: A Monocular SE(3) Diffusion Framework for Robust Camera-to-Robot Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.10434/) (2025)
- [Few-Shot Incremental 3D Object Detection in Dynamic Indoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07997/) (2026)
- [Iterative Camera-LiDAR Extrinsic Optimization via Surrogate Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10936/) (2024)
- [Search-MIND: Training-Free Multi-Modal Medical Image Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09743/) (2026)
- [Flow6D: Discrete-to-Continuous Flow Matching for Efficient and Accurate Category-Level 6D Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.23293/) (2026)
- [Iterative Camera-LiDAR Extrinsic Optimization via Surrogate Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14706/) (2025)
- [Robust and Accurate Multi-view 2D/3D Image Registration with Differentiable X-ray Rendering and Dual Cross-view Constraints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22191/) (2025)
- [iMatcher: Improve matching in point cloud registration via local-to-global geometric consistency learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.08982/) (2025)
- [LieHMR: Autoregressive Human Mesh Recovery with SO(3) Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.25739/) (2025)
- [Kinematics-Aware Diffusion Policy with Consistent 3D Observation and Action Space for Whole-Arm Robotic Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17568/) (2025)
- [MeshOn: Intersection-Free Mesh-to-Mesh Composition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.08799/) (2026)
- [Riemannian Diffusion Models on General Manifolds via Physics-Informed Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.31106/) (2026)
- [A Cross-view Fusion Framework for Robust 6-DoF Grasp Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06878/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this paper, we introduce an SE(3) diffusion model-based point cloud registration framework for 6D object pose estimation in real-world scenarios. Our approach formulates the 3D registration task as a denoising diffusion process, which progressively refines the pose of the source point cloud to obtain a precise alignment with the model point cloud. Training our framework involves two operations: An SE(3) diffusion process and an SE(3) reverse process. The SE(3) diffusion process gradually perturbs the optimal rigid transformation of a pair of point clouds by continuously injecting noise (perturbation transformation). By contrast, the SE(3) reverse process focuses on learning a denoising network that refines the noisy transformation step-by-step, bringing it closer to the optimal transformation for accurate pose estimation. Unlike standard diffusion models used in linear Euclidean spaces, our diffusion model operates on the SE(3) manifold. This requires exploiting the linear Lie algebra mathfrakse(3) associated with SE(3) to constrain the transformation transitions during the diffusion and reverse processes. Additionally, to effectively train our denoising network, we derive a registration-specific variational lower bound as the optimization objective for model learning. Furthermore, we show that our denoising network can be constructed with a surrogate registration model, making our approach applicable to different deep registration networks. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our diffusion registration framework presents outstanding pose estimation performance on the real-world TUD-L, LINEMOD, and Occluded-LINEMOD datasets.