# Learning 3D object-centric representation through prediction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.03730 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03730/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Spatial and embodied reasoning, one of 17 directions in LLM reasoning.
- Builds on 5 of its 8 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- LLM reasoning / [Spatial and embodied reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/lr/spatial-and-embodied-reasoning/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [Object-Centric Learning with Slot Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.15055/) (2020)
- [MONet: Unsupervised Scene Decomposition and Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.11390/) (2019)
- [SAVi++: Towards End-to-End Object-Centric Learning from Real-World Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07764/) (2022)
- [Unsupervised object-centric video generation and decomposition in 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.06705/) (2020)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As part of human core knowledge, the representation of objects is the building block of mental representation that supports high-level concepts and symbolic reasoning. While humans develop the ability of perceiving objects situated in 3D environments without supervision, models that learn the same set of abilities with similar constraints faced by human infants are lacking. Towards this end, we developed a novel network architecture that simultaneously learns to 1) segment objects from discrete images, 2) infer their 3D locations, and 3) perceive depth, all while using only information directly available to the brain as training data, namely: sequences of images and self-motion. The core idea is treating objects as latent causes of visual input which the brain uses to make efficient predictions of future scenes. This results in object representations being learned as an essential byproduct of learning to predict.