# Learning Cross-view Visual Geo-localization without Ground Truth

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.12702 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12702/

## Key facts

- Cited by 18 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 32 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Mar 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Representation Learning with Contrastive Predictive Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03748/) (2018)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07258/) (2021)
- [Unsupervised Learning of Visual Features by Contrasting Cluster Assignments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09882/) (2020)
- [CLIP-Adapter: Better Vision-Language Models with Feature Adapters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04544/) (2021)
- [NetVLAD: CNN architecture for weakly supervised place recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07247/) (2015)
- [Confidence Regularized Self-Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09822/) (2019)
- [LST: Ladder Side-Tuning for Parameter and Memory Efficient Transfer Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.06522/) (2022)
- [GeoCLIP: Clip-Inspired Alignment between Locations and Images for Effective Worldwide Geo-localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16020/) (2023)
- [Wide-Area Image Geolocalization with Aerial Reference Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.03743/) (2015)
- [Lending Orientation to Neural Networks for Cross-view Geo-localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.12351/) (2019)
- [AnyLoc: Towards Universal Visual Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.00688/) (2023)
- [University-1652: A Multi-view Multi-source Benchmark for Drone-based Geo-localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12186/) (2020)
- [Sample4Geo: Hard Negative Sampling For Cross-View Geo-Localisation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11851/) (2023)
- [Each Part Matters: Local Patterns Facilitate Cross-view Geo-localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.11646/) (2020)
- [Bridging the Domain Gap for Ground-to-Aerial Image Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.11045/) (2019)
- [Cross-view Geo-localization via Learning Disentangled Geometric Layout Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.04074/) (2022)
- [A Transformer-Based Feature Segmentation and Region Alignment Method For UAV-View Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.09206/) (2022)
- [Towards Seamless Adaptation of Pre-trained Models for Visual Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14505/) (2024)
- [Learning Generalized Zero-Shot Learners for Open-Domain Image Geolocalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00275/) (2023)
- [Multiple-environment Self-adaptive Network for Aerial-view Geo-localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08381/) (2022)
- [SVL-Adapter: Self-Supervised Adapter for Vision-Language Pretrained Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03794/) (2022)
- [Learning Cross-view Geo-localization Embeddings via Dynamic Weighted Decorrelation Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05296/) (2022)
- [Self-supervised Meta-Prompt Learning with Meta-Gradient Regularization for Few-shot Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12314/) (2023)
- [A Novel Self-Supervised Cross-Modal Image Retrieval Method In Remote Sensing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.11429/) (2022)
- [Low-rank Attention Side-Tuning for Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04009/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Video2BEV: Transforming Drone Videos to BEVs for Video-based Geo-localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.13610/) (2024)
- [Cross-view geo-localization: a survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09722/) (2024)
- [Cross-View Image Set Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.18852/) (2024)
- [Scale-adaptive UAV Geo-localization via Height-aware Partition Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11535/) (2024)
- [Without Paired Labeled Data: End-to-End Self-Supervised Learning for Drone-view Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.11381/) (2025)
- [UniABG: Unified Adversarial View Bridging and Graph Correspondence for Unsupervised Cross-View Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.12054/) (2025)
- [Cross-View Geo-Localization with Street-View and VHR Satellite Imagery in Decentrality Settings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11529/) (2024)
- [GeoVLM: Improving Automated Vehicle Geolocalisation Using Vision-Language Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.13669/) (2025)
- [From Limited Labels to Open Domains:An Efficient Learning Method for Drone-view Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07520/) (2025)
- [GLEAM: Learning to Match and Explain in Cross-View Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.07450/) (2025)
- [Sky2Ground: A Benchmark for Site Modeling under Varying Altitude](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13740/) (2026)
- [Unifying UAV Cross-View Geo-Localization via 3D Geometric Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01747/) (2026)
- [Wrivinder: Towards Spatial Intelligence for Geo-locating Ground Images onto Satellite Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14929/) (2026)
- [VFM-Loc: Training-Free Cross-View Geo-Localization via Aligning Discriminative Visual Hierarchies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.13855/) (2026)
- [Satellite-Free Training for Drone-View Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.01581/) (2026)
- [InfoGeo: Information-Theoretic Object-Centric Learning for Cross-View Generalizable UAV Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.07099/) (2026)
- [BGG: Bridging the Geometric Gap between Cross-View images by Vision Foundation Model Adaptation for Geo-Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10345/) (2026)
- [STEAM: Stable Self-Training with Elastic Matching and Adaptive Purification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.09057/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Cross-View Geo-Localization (CVGL) involves determining the geographical location of a query image by matching it with a corresponding GPS-tagged reference image. Current state-of-the-art methods predominantly rely on training models with labeled paired images, incurring substantial annotation costs and training burdens. In this study, we investigate the adaptation of frozen models for CVGL without requiring ground truth pair labels. We observe that training on unlabeled cross-view images presents significant challenges, including the need to establish relationships within unlabeled data and reconcile view discrepancies between uncertain queries and references. To address these challenges, we propose a self-supervised learning framework to train a learnable adapter for a frozen Foundation Model (FM). This adapter is designed to map feature distributions from diverse views into a uniform space using unlabeled data exclusively. To establish relationships within unlabeled data, we introduce an Expectation-Maximization-based Pseudo-labeling module, which iteratively estimates associations between cross-view features and optimizes the adapter. To maintain the robustness of the FM's representation, we incorporate an information consistency module with a reconstruction loss, ensuring that adapted features retain strong discriminative ability across views. Experimental results demonstrate that our proposed method achieves significant improvements over vanilla FMs and competitive accuracy compared to supervised methods, while necessitating fewer training parameters and relying solely on unlabeled data. Evaluation of our adaptation for task-specific models further highlights its broad applicability.