# On the Overconfidence Problem in Semantic 3D Mapping

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.10018 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.10018/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 16 Nov 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [On Calibration of Modern Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.04599/) (2017)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [SegFormer: Simple and Efficient Design for Semantic Segmentation with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.15203/) (2021)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [Measuring Calibration in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01685/) (2019)
- [Object Goal Navigation using Goal-Oriented Semantic Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00643/) (2020)
- [Beyond temperature scaling: Obtaining well-calibrated multiclass probabilities with Dirichlet calibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.12656/) (2019)
- [Learning to Explore using Active Neural SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.05155/) (2020)
- [Verified Uncertainty Calibration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.10155/) (2019)
- [ObjectNav Revisited: On Evaluation of Embodied Agents Navigating to Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.13171/) (2020)
- [Panoptic Neural Fields: A Semantic Object-Aware Neural Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.04334/) (2022)
- [Confidence Calibration and Predictive Uncertainty Estimation for Deep Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.13273/) (2019)
- [Panoptic NeRF: 3D-to-2D Label Transfer for Panoptic Urban Scene Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.15224/) (2022)
- [PONI: Potential Functions for ObjectGoal Navigation with Interaction-free Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.10029/) (2022)
- [Kimera: from SLAM to Spatial Perception with 3D Dynamic Scene Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06894/) (2021)
- [Fusion++: Volumetric Object-Level SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.08378/) (2018)
- [PanopticFusion: Online Volumetric Semantic Mapping at the Level of Stuff and Things](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.01177/) (2019)
- [MaskFusion: Real-Time Recognition, Tracking and Reconstruction of Multiple Moving Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.09194/) (2018)
- [Efficient RGB-D Semantic Segmentation for Indoor Scene Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.06961/) (2020)
- [Volumetric Instance-Aware Semantic Mapping and 3D Object Discovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.00268/) (2019)
- [Top-label calibration and multiclass-to-binary reductions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.08353/) (2021)
- [3D-Aware Object Goal Navigation via Simultaneous Exploration and Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.00338/) (2022)
- [Panoptic Multi-TSDFs: a Flexible Representation for Online Multi-resolution Volumetric Mapping and Long-term Dynamic Scene Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.10165/) (2021)
- [Meaningful Maps With Object-Oriented Semantic Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1609.07849/) (2016)
- [Meta-Calibration: Learning of Model Calibration Using Differentiable Expected Calibration Error](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09613/) (2021)
- [PEANUT: Predicting and Navigating to Unseen Targets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.02497/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Evidential Semantic Mapping in Off-road Environments with Uncertainty-aware Bayesian Kernel Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14138/) (2024)
- [EvidMTL: Evidential Multi-Task Learning for Uncertainty-Aware Semantic Surface Mapping from Monocular RGB Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.04441/) (2025)
- [Uncertainty-aware Semantic Mapping in Off-road Environments with Dempster-Shafer Theory of Evidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06265/) (2024)
- [Map Space Belief Prediction for Manipulation-Enhanced Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.20606/) (2025)
- [A Calibration Audit of Confidence in Feed-Forward 3D Reconstruction Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29705/) (2026)
- [Hierarchical Aggregation of Semantic Uncertainty in 3D Scene Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.22351/) (2026)
- [PanOVOcc: Panoramic Embodied Open-Vocabulary Occupancy Mapping with Long-term Spatial Voxel Memory](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.31716/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Semantic 3D mapping, the process of fusing depth and image segmentation information between multiple views to build 3D maps annotated with object classes in real-time, is a recent topic of interest. This paper highlights the fusion overconfidence problem, in which conventional mapping methods assign high confidence to the entire map even when they are incorrect, leading to miscalibrated outputs. Several methods to improve uncertainty calibration at different stages in the fusion pipeline are presented and compared on the ScanNet dataset. We show that the most widely used Bayesian fusion strategy is among the worst calibrated, and propose a learned pipeline that combines fusion and calibration, GLFS, which achieves simultaneously higher accuracy and 3D map calibration while retaining real-time capability. We further illustrate the importance of map calibration on a downstream task by showing that incorporating proper semantic fusion on a modular ObjectNav agent improves its success rates. Our code will be provided on Github for reproducibility upon acceptance.