General Place Recognition Survey: Towards Real-World Autonomy
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Abstract (arXiv)
In the realm of robotics, the quest for achieving real-world autonomy, capable of executing large-scale and long-term operations, has positioned place recognition (PR) as a cornerstone technology. Despite the PR community's remarkable strides over the past two decades, garnering attention from fields like computer vision and robotics, the development of PR methods that sufficiently support real-world robotic systems remains a challenge. This paper aims to bridge this gap by highlighting the crucial role of PR within the framework of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) 2.0. This new phase in robotic navigation calls for scalable, adaptable, and efficient PR solutions by integrating advanced artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. For this goal, we provide a comprehensive review of the current state-of-the-art (SOTA) advancements in PR, alongside the remaining challenges, and underscore its broad applications in robotics. This paper begins with an exploration of PR's formulation and key research challenges. We extensively review literature, focusing on related methods on place representation and solutions to various PR challenges. Applications showcasing PR's potential in robotics, key PR datasets, and open-source libraries are discussed. We conclude with a discussion on PR's future directions and provide a summary of the literature covered at: https://github.com/MetaSLAM/GPRS.
Key facts. Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 150 of its 236 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 8 May 2024.
Builds on
150 of 236 references.
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50 most cited of 150 All 150 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2024: 3; 2025: 5; 2026: 15.
23 papers.
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- 2024LiteVLoc: Map-Lite Visual Localization for Image Goal Navigationcited by 4
- 2025Vehicle-Scene Interaction: A Text-Driven 3D Lidar Place Recognition Method for Autonomous Drivingcited by 2
- 2025ROVER: Robust Loop Closure Verification with Trajectory Prior in Repetitive Environmentscited by 2
- 2025Through the Lens of Doubt: Robust and Efficient Uncertainty Estimation for Visual Place Recognitioncited by 2
- 2025Ranking-aware Continual Learning for LiDAR Place Recognitioncited by 1
- 2026DC-VLAQ: Query-Residual Aggregation for Robust Visual Place Recognitioncited by 1
- 2026The S3LI Vulcano Dataset: A Dataset for Multi-Modal SLAM in Unstructured Planetary Environmentscited by 1
- 2026Advanced techniques and applications of LiDAR Place Recognition in Agricultural Environments: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 1
- 2026Quantile Transfer for Reliable Operating Point Selection in Visual Place Recognitioncited by 1
- 2024Why Sample Space Matters: Keyframe Sampling Optimization for LiDAR-based Place Recognitioncited by 0
- 2024SF-Loc: A Visual Mapping and Geo-Localization System based on Sparse Visual Structure Framescited by 0
- 2025Learning from Mistakes: Loss-Aware Memory Enhanced Continual Learning for LiDAR Place Recognitioncited by 0
11 more
- 2026OpenNavMap: Multi-Session Appearance-Based Topometric Mapping for Scalable Visual Navigationcited by 0
- 2026From Single Scan to Sequential Consistency: A New Paradigm for LIDAR Relocalizationcited by 0
- 2026EPRBench: A High-Quality Benchmark Dataset for Event Stream Based Visual Place Recognitioncited by 0
- 2026RLPR: Radar-to-LiDAR Place Recognition via Two-Stage Asymmetric Cross-Modal Alignment for Autonomous Drivingcited by 0
- 2026DisPlace: Discriminative Place Projections for Multi-Reference Visual Place Recognitioncited by 0
- 2026GeoUniPR: A Geometry-Consistent Unified Framework for Cross-Modal Place Recognitioncited by 0
- 2026LightLoc++: Sensor-Robust Representation Learning for Efficient Outdoor LiDAR Localizationcited by 0
- 2026LT-Mem: Volatility-Aware Spatio-Temporal Memory for Lifelong Scene Understandingcited by 0
- 2026Geometry-Conditioned Visual Place Recognition in Natural Environmentscited by 0
- 2026Automotive mmWave Spinning Radar Place Recognition with Spatially Gated Feature-Correlation Representationcited by 0
- 2026Temporal-Aware Fusion for Robust Outdoor LiDAR Localizationcited by 0
- 2026Temporal-Aware Fusion for Robust Outdoor LiDAR Localization29 Sep 2026
- 2026Automotive mmWave Spinning Radar Place Recognition with Spatially Gated Feature-Correlation Representation23 Sep 2026
- 2026Geometry-Conditioned Visual Place Recognition in Natural Environments23 Sep 2026
- 2026LT-Mem: Volatility-Aware Spatio-Temporal Memory for Lifelong Scene Understanding19 Aug 2026
- 2026LightLoc++: Sensor-Robust Representation Learning for Efficient Outdoor LiDAR Localization15 Aug 2026
- 2026GeoUniPR: A Geometry-Consistent Unified Framework for Cross-Modal Place Recognition10 Aug 2026
- 2026DisPlace: Discriminative Place Projections for Multi-Reference Visual Place Recognition29 May 2026
- 2026RLPR: Radar-to-LiDAR Place Recognition via Two-Stage Asymmetric Cross-Modal Alignment for Autonomous Driving9 Mar 2026
- 2026EPRBench: A High-Quality Benchmark Dataset for Event Stream Based Visual Place Recognition13 Feb 2026
- 2026Quantile Transfer for Reliable Operating Point Selection in Visual Place Recognition4 Feb 2026
- 2026From Single Scan to Sequential Consistency: A New Paradigm for LIDAR Relocalization3 Feb 2026
- 2026Advanced techniques and applications of LiDAR Place Recognition in Agricultural Environments: A Comprehensive Survey29 Jan 2026
11 more
- 2026The S3LI Vulcano Dataset: A Dataset for Multi-Modal SLAM in Unstructured Planetary Environments27 Jan 2026
- 2026DC-VLAQ: Query-Residual Aggregation for Robust Visual Place Recognition19 Jan 2026
- 2026OpenNavMap: Multi-Session Appearance-Based Topometric Mapping for Scalable Visual Navigation18 Jan 2026
- 2025Learning from Mistakes: Loss-Aware Memory Enhanced Continual Learning for LiDAR Place Recognition19 Nov 2025
- 2025Through the Lens of Doubt: Robust and Efficient Uncertainty Estimation for Visual Place Recognition15 Oct 2025
- 2025ROVER: Robust Loop Closure Verification with Trajectory Prior in Repetitive Environments19 Aug 2025
- 2025Ranking-aware Continual Learning for LiDAR Place Recognition12 May 2025
- 2025Vehicle-Scene Interaction: A Text-Driven 3D Lidar Place Recognition Method for Autonomous Driving23 Mar 2025
- 2024SF-Loc: A Visual Mapping and Geo-Localization System based on Sparse Visual Structure Frames2 Dec 2024
- 2024LiteVLoc: Map-Lite Visual Localization for Image Goal Navigation6 Oct 2024
- 2024Why Sample Space Matters: Keyframe Sampling Optimization for LiDAR-based Place Recognition3 Oct 2024
- 2024LiteVLoc: Map-Lite Visual Localization for Image Goal Navigationcited by 4
- 2025Vehicle-Scene Interaction: A Text-Driven 3D Lidar Place Recognition Method for Autonomous Drivingcited by 2
- 2025ROVER: Robust Loop Closure Verification with Trajectory Prior in Repetitive Environmentscited by 2
- 2025Through the Lens of Doubt: Robust and Efficient Uncertainty Estimation for Visual Place Recognitioncited by 2
- 2025Ranking-aware Continual Learning for LiDAR Place Recognitioncited by 1
- 2026DC-VLAQ: Query-Residual Aggregation for Robust Visual Place Recognitioncited by 1
- 2026The S3LI Vulcano Dataset: A Dataset for Multi-Modal SLAM in Unstructured Planetary Environmentscited by 1
- 2026Advanced techniques and applications of LiDAR Place Recognition in Agricultural Environments: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 1
- 2026Quantile Transfer for Reliable Operating Point Selection in Visual Place Recognitioncited by 1
- 2024Why Sample Space Matters: Keyframe Sampling Optimization for LiDAR-based Place Recognitioncited by 0
- 2024SF-Loc: A Visual Mapping and Geo-Localization System based on Sparse Visual Structure Framescited by 0
- 2025Learning from Mistakes: Loss-Aware Memory Enhanced Continual Learning for LiDAR Place Recognitioncited by 0
12 most cited of 23 All 23 (JSON)
- 2026Temporal-Aware Fusion for Robust Outdoor LiDAR Localization29 Sep 2026
- 2026Automotive mmWave Spinning Radar Place Recognition with Spatially Gated Feature-Correlation Representation23 Sep 2026
- 2026Geometry-Conditioned Visual Place Recognition in Natural Environments23 Sep 2026
- 2026LT-Mem: Volatility-Aware Spatio-Temporal Memory for Lifelong Scene Understanding19 Aug 2026
- 2026LightLoc++: Sensor-Robust Representation Learning for Efficient Outdoor LiDAR Localization15 Aug 2026
- 2026GeoUniPR: A Geometry-Consistent Unified Framework for Cross-Modal Place Recognition10 Aug 2026
- 2026DisPlace: Discriminative Place Projections for Multi-Reference Visual Place Recognition29 May 2026
- 2026RLPR: Radar-to-LiDAR Place Recognition via Two-Stage Asymmetric Cross-Modal Alignment for Autonomous Driving9 Mar 2026
- 2026EPRBench: A High-Quality Benchmark Dataset for Event Stream Based Visual Place Recognition13 Feb 2026
- 2026Quantile Transfer for Reliable Operating Point Selection in Visual Place Recognition4 Feb 2026
- 2026From Single Scan to Sequential Consistency: A New Paradigm for LIDAR Relocalization3 Feb 2026
- 2026Advanced techniques and applications of LiDAR Place Recognition in Agricultural Environments: A Comprehensive Survey29 Jan 2026
12 newest of 23 All 23 (JSON)