# High-Fidelity SLAM Using Gaussian Splatting with Rendering-Guided Densification and Regularized Optimization

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.12535 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12535/

## Key facts

- Cited by 15 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Mar 2024.

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

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05131/) (2021)
- [ORB-SLAM: a Versatile and Accurate Monocular SLAM System](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.00956/) (2015)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [Zip-NeRF: Anti-Aliased Grid-Based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06706/) (2023)
- [BARF: Bundle-Adjusting Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06405/) (2021)
- [NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12130/) (2021)
- [LERF: Language Embedded Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09553/) (2023)
- [Direct Sparse Odometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.02565/) (2016)
- [iMAP: Implicit Mapping and Positioning in Real-Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12352/) (2021)
- [Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06741/) (2023)
- [LangSplat: 3D Language Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16084/) (2023)
- [SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02126/) (2023)
- [INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05877/) (2020)
- [Text-to-3D using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16585/) (2023)
- [GS-SLAM: Dense Visual SLAM with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11700/) (2023)
- [A Survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03890/) (2024)
- [Co-SLAM: Joint Coordinate and Sparse Parametric Encodings for Neural Real-Time SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14377/) (2023)
- [Point-SLAM: Dense Neural Point Cloud-based SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04278/) (2023)
- [ESLAM: Efficient Dense SLAM System Based on Hybrid Representation of Signed Distance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11704/) (2022)
- [Gaussian-SLAM: Photo-realistic Dense SLAM with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10070/) (2023)
- [Photo-SLAM: Real-time Simultaneous Localization and Photorealistic Mapping for Monocular, Stereo, and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16728/) (2023)
- [Self6D: Self-Supervised Monocular 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.06468/) (2020)
- [Loopy-SLAM: Dense Neural SLAM with Loop Closures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09944/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting: Survey, Technologies, Challenges, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17418/) (2024)
- [On-the-fly Reconstruction for Large-Scale Novel View Synthesis from Unposed Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05558/) (2025)
- [Z-Splat: Z-Axis Gaussian Splatting for Camera-Sonar Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.04687/) (2024)
- [Advancing Extended Reality with 3D Gaussian Splatting: Innovations and Prospects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.06257/) (2024)
- [DROID-Splat: Combining end-to-end SLAM with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17660/) (2024)
- [Digital Twin Generation from Visual Data: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13159/) (2025)
- [On-the-fly Large-scale 3D Reconstruction from Multi-Camera Rigs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.08498/) (2025)
- [SVR-GS: Spatially Variant Regularization for Probabilistic Masks in 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.11116/) (2025)
- [Towards Next-Generation SLAM: A Survey on 3DGS-SLAM Focusing on Performance, Robustness, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04251/) (2026)
- [SEAR: Simple and Efficient Adaptation of Visual Geometric Transformers for Unpaired RGB+Thermal 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18774/) (2026)
- [A Constrained Optimization Approach for Gaussian Splatting from Coarsely-posed Images and Noisy Lidar Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.09129/) (2025)
- [LASAR: Towards Spatio-temporal Reasoning with Latent Cognitive Map](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.16899/) (2026)
- [Unpaired RGB-Thermal Gaussian-Splatting Using Visual Geometric Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.05491/) (2026)
- [Stipple: Real-Time Incremental Gaussian Splatting with Visual-Inertial Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.00931/) (2026)
- [Cube-Splat: High-Fidelity 360deg Gaussian Splatting SLAM via Cubemap Factorization and Adjoint-Consistent Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.21347/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We propose a dense RGBD SLAM system based on 3D Gaussian Splatting that provides metrically accurate pose tracking and visually realistic reconstruction. To this end, we first propose a Gaussian densification strategy based on the rendering loss to map unobserved areas and refine reobserved areas. Second, we introduce extra regularization parameters to alleviate the forgetting problem in the continuous mapping problem, where parameters tend to overfit the latest frame and result in decreasing rendering quality for previous frames. Both mapping and tracking are performed with Gaussian parameters by minimizing re-rendering loss in a differentiable way. Compared to recent neural and concurrently developed gaussian splatting RGBD SLAM baselines, our method achieves state-of-the-art results on the synthetic dataset Replica and competitive results on the real-world dataset TUM.