mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Neural Radiance Field in Autonomous Driving: A Survey

arXiv 2404.13816 ↗First posted 22 Apr 2024cs.CVcited by 19

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Abstract (arXiv)

Neural Radiance Field (NeRF) has garnered significant attention from both academia and industry due to its intrinsic advantages, particularly its implicit representation and novel view synthesis capabilities. With the rapid advancements in deep learning, a multitude of methods have emerged to explore the potential applications of NeRF in the domain of Autonomous Driving (AD). However, a conspicuous void is apparent within the current literature. To bridge this gap, this paper conducts a comprehensive survey of NeRF's applications in the context of AD. Our survey is structured to categorize NeRF's applications in Autonomous Driving (AD), specifically encompassing perception, 3D reconstruction, simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), and simulation. We delve into in-depth analysis and summarize the findings for each application category, and conclude by providing insights and discussions on future directions in this field. We hope this paper serves as a comprehensive reference for researchers in this domain. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first survey specifically focused on the applications of NeRF in the Autonomous Driving domain.

Key facts. Cited by 19 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 98 of its 108 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 22 Apr 2024.

Builds on

98 of 108 references.

References · 98

  1. 2023DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervisioncited by 7,764
  2. 2021Masked Autoencoders Are Scalable Vision Learnerscited by 7,339
  3. 20233D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Renderingcited by 6,141
  4. 2022Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encodingcited by 3,698
  5. 2017CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulatorcited by 2,431
  6. 2021Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networkscited by 1,607
  7. 2020NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collectionscited by 1,230
  8. 2022BEVFormer: Learning Bird's-Eye-View Representation from Multi-Camera Images via Spatiotemporal Transformerscited by 1,213
  9. 2016HyperNetworkscited by 1,003
  10. 2016Playing for Data: Ground Truth from Computer Gamescited by 816
  11. 2016ORB-SLAM2: an Open-Source SLAM System for Monocular, Stereo and RGB-D Camerascited by 801
  12. 2022Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesiscited by 720
38 more
  1. 2021NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAMcited by 586
  2. 2017AirSim: High-Fidelity Visual and Physical Simulation for Autonomous Vehiclescited by 517
  3. 2021iMAP: Implicit Mapping and Positioning in Real-Timecited by 476
  4. 2023Gaussian Splatting SLAMcited by 410
  5. 2023SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAMcited by 386
  6. 2020INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimationcited by 381
  7. 2023DrivingGaussian: Composite Gaussian Splatting for Surrounding Dynamic Autonomous Driving Scenescited by 359
  8. 2020Virtual KITTI 2cited by 345
  9. 2016Virtual Worlds as Proxy for Multi-Object Tracking Analysiscited by 340
  10. 2020Neural Scene Graphs for Dynamic Scenescited by 298
  11. 2023UniSim: A Neural Closed-Loop Sensor Simulatorcited by 294
  12. 2023GS-SLAM: Dense Visual SLAM with 3D Gaussian Splattingcited by 278
  13. 2024Street Gaussians: Modeling Dynamic Urban Scenes with Gaussian Splattingcited by 218
  14. 2023EmerNeRF: Emergent Spatial-Temporal Scene Decomposition via Self-Supervisioncited by 216
  15. 2022NeRF-SLAM: Real-Time Dense Monocular SLAM with Neural Radiance Fieldscited by 188
  16. 2023Co-SLAM: Joint Coordinate and Sparse Parametric Encodings for Neural Real-Time SLAMcited by 183
  17. 2023MARS: An Instance-aware, Modular and Realistic Simulator for Autonomous Drivingcited by 170
  18. 2023NICER-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scene Encoding for RGB SLAMcited by 162
  19. 2022Sparse4D: Multi-view 3D Object Detection with Sparse Spatial-Temporal Fusioncited by 161
  20. 2023Point-SLAM: Dense Neural Point Cloud-based SLAMcited by 160
  21. 2022ESLAM: Efficient Dense SLAM System Based on Hybrid Representation of Signed Distance Fieldscited by 158
  22. 2021Vision-Only Robot Navigation in a Neural Radiance Worldcited by 153
  23. 2023Gaussian-SLAM: Photo-realistic Dense SLAM with Gaussian Splattingcited by 152
  24. 2023SUDS: Scalable Urban Dynamic Scenescited by 151
  25. 2022Vox-Fusion: Dense Tracking and Mapping with Voxel-based Neural Implicit Representationcited by 149
  26. 2023NeuRAD: Neural Rendering for Autonomous Drivingcited by 146
  27. 2023Periodic Vibration Gaussian: Dynamic Urban Scene Reconstruction and Real-time Renderingcited by 143
  28. 2024HUGS: Holistic Urban 3D Scene Understanding via Gaussian Splattingcited by 141
  29. 2021MINE: Towards Continuous Depth MPI with NeRF for Novel View Synthesiscited by 133
  30. 2023GO-SLAM: Global Optimization for Consistent 3D Instant Reconstructioncited by 132
  31. 2023RenderOcc: Vision-Centric 3D Occupancy Prediction with 2D Rendering Supervisioncited by 126
  32. 2017Augmented Reality Meets Computer Vision : Efficient Data Generation for Urban Driving Scenescited by 122
  33. 2023StreetSurf: Extending Multi-view Implicit Surface Reconstruction to Street Viewscited by 120
  34. 2021LENS: Localization enhanced by NeRF synthesiscited by 116
  35. 2022NeRFusion: Fusing Radiance Fields for Large-Scale Scene Reconstructioncited by 99
  36. 2023Sparse4D v2: Recurrent Temporal Fusion with Sparse Modelcited by 92
  37. 2023Neural Fields meet Explicit Geometric Representation for Inverse Rendering of Urban Scenescited by 89
  38. 2024SGS-SLAM: Semantic Gaussian Splatting For Neural Dense SLAMcited by 86

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2024: 6; 2025: 9; 2026: 4.

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  1. 2024GaussianOcc: Fully Self-supervised and Efficient 3D Occupancy Estimation with Gaussian Splattingcited by 50
  2. 2024DistillNeRF: Perceiving 3D Scenes from Single-Glance Images by Distilling Neural Fields and Foundation Model Featurescited by 33
  3. 2024LumiGauss: Relightable Gaussian Splatting in the Wildcited by 21
  4. 2025OccluGaussian: Occlusion-Aware Gaussian Splatting for Large Scene Reconstruction and Renderingcited by 10
  5. 2024XLD: A Cross-Lane Dataset for Benchmarking Novel Driving View Synthesiscited by 9
  6. 2025Learning-based 3D Reconstruction in Autonomous Driving: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 9
  7. 2025Generative AI for Autonomous Driving: Frontiers and Opportunitiescited by 7
  8. 2025Trends in Motion Prediction Toward Deployable and Generalizable Autonomy: A Revisit and Perspectivescited by 5
  9. 2025Simulating the Unseen: Crash Prediction Must Learn from What Did Not Happencited by 5
  10. 2025Advances in Radiance Field for Dynamic Scene: From Neural Field to Gaussian Fieldcited by 4
  11. 2025Advances in 4D Representation: Geometry, Motion, and Interactioncited by 4
  12. 2024OE-BevSeg: An Object Informed and Environment Aware Multimodal Framework for Bird's-eye-view Vehicle Semantic Segmentationcited by 3
7 more
  1. 2026Evidential Neural Radiance Fieldscited by 3
  2. 2025SymDrive: Realistic and Controllable Driving Simulator via Symmetric Auto-regressive Online Restorationcited by 2
  3. 2024Editing Implicit and Explicit Representations of Radiance Fields: A Surveycited by 1
  4. 2025AegisRF: Adversarial Perturbations Guided with Sensitivity for Protecting Intellectual Property of Neural Radiance Fieldscited by 0
  5. 2026VisionNVS: Self-Supervised Inpainting for Novel View Synthesis under the Virtual-Shift Paradigmcited by 0
  6. 2026Thermal is Always Wild: Characterizing and Addressing Challenges in Thermal-Only Novel View Synthesiscited by 0
  7. 2026Reconstructing the Dynamic World: A Representation-Centric View of 4D Scene Reconstructioncited by 0