# NeRFs in Robotics: A Survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.01333 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01333/

## Key facts

- Cited by 16 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 199 of its 268 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 199)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [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)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (2021)
- [Make-A-Video: Text-to-Video Generation without Text-Video Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.14792/) (2022)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [Plenoxels: Radiance Fields without Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.05131/) (2021)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [3D U-Net: Learning Dense Volumetric Segmentation from Sparse Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.06650/) (2016)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [Demystifying MMD GANs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01401/) (2018)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [Nerfies: Deformable Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12948/) (2020)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (2021)
- [Direct Voxel Grid Optimization: Super-fast Convergence for Radiance Fields Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.11215/) (2021)
- [Neural Sparse Voxel Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11571/) (2020)
- [PlenOctrees for Real-time Rendering of Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14024/) (2021)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [NeRF++: Analyzing and Improving Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.07492/) (2020)
- [Panoptic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.00868/) (2018)
- [Neural Scene Flow Fields for Space-Time View Synthesis of Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13084/) (2020)
- [K-Planes: Explicit Radiance Fields in Space, Time, and Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10241/) (2023)
- [Depth-supervised NeRF: Fewer Views and Faster Training for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02791/) (2021)
- [Block-NeRF: Scalable Large Scene Neural View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05263/) (2022)
- [Language-driven Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03546/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 16 of 16)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting: Survey, Technologies, Challenges, and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17418/) (2024)
- [DistillNeRF: Perceiving 3D Scenes from Single-Glance Images by Distilling Neural Fields and Foundation Model Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12095/) (2024)
- [Neural Fields in Robotics: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.20220/) (2024)
- [SketchVideo: Sketch-based Video Generation and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23284/) (2025)
- [GSurf: Learning Signed Distance Fields from Splatting Opaque Gaussians for High-quality 3D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15723/) (2024)
- [Generative AI for Autonomous Driving: Frontiers and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.08854/) (2025)
- [Trends in Motion Prediction Toward Deployable and Generalizable Autonomy: A Revisit and Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09074/) (2025)
- [Advances in Radiance Field for Dynamic Scene: From Neural Field to Gaussian Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10049/) (2025)
- [UAVTwin: Neural Digital Twins for UAVs using Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02158/) (2025)
- [DSG-World: Learning a 3D Gaussian World Model from Dual State Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.05217/) (2025)
- [Toward Generalist Neural Motion Planners for Robotic Manipulators: Challenges and Opportunities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.24318/) (2026)
- [Thermal is Always Wild: Characterizing and Addressing Challenges in Thermal-Only Novel View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.20448/) (2026)
- [A Comparative Evaluation of Geometric Accuracy in NeRF and Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.18205/) (2026)
- [CLEAR-NeRF: Collinearity and Local-region Enhanced Accurate 3D Reconstruction in Unbounded Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.28125/) (2026)
- [SplatCtrl: Perception-Action Coupling via Gaussian Scene Representations and Reactive Robot Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.08948/) (2026)
- [VI3: Grounding Pretrained 3D Foundation Models with Inertial Cues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.03824/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Detailed and realistic 3D environment representations have been a long-standing goal in the fields of computer vision and robotics. The recent emergence of neural implicit representations has introduced significant advances to these domains, enabling numerous novel capabilities. Among these, Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) have gained considerable attention because of their considerable representational advantages, such as simplified mathematical models, low memory footprint, and continuous scene representations. In addition to computer vision, NeRFs have demonstrated significant potential in robotics. Thus, we present this survey to provide a comprehensive understanding of NeRFs in the field of robotics. By exploring the advantages and limitations of NeRF as well as its current applications and future potential, we aim to provide an overview of this promising area of research. Our survey is divided into two main sections: textitApplications of NeRFs in Robotics and textitAdvances for NeRFs in Robotics, from the perspective of how NeRF enters the field of robotics. In the first section, we introduce and analyze some works that have been or could be used in robotics for perception and interaction tasks. In the second section, we show some works related to improving NeRF's own properties, which are essential for deploying NeRFs in robotics. In the discussion section of the review, we summarize the existing challenges and provide valuable future research directions.