# General Place Recognition Survey: Towards Real-World Autonomy

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.04812 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.04812/

## Key facts

- Cited by 23 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 150 of its 236 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 150)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [MobileNetV2: Inverted Residuals and Linear Bottlenecks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.04381/) (2018)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [Sinkhorn Distances: Lightspeed Computation of Optimal Transportation Distances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1306.0895/) (2013)
- [MLP-Mixer: An all-MLP Architecture for Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.01601/) (2021)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [4D Spatio-Temporal ConvNets: Minkowski Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08755/) (2019)
- [NetVLAD: CNN architecture for weakly supervised place recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07247/) (2015)
- [ORB-SLAM3: An Accurate Open-Source Library for Visual, Visual-Inertial and Multi-Map SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11898/) (2020)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of Continual Learning: Theory, Method and Application](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00487/) (2023)
- [Generalizing to Unseen Domains: A Survey on Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03097/) (2021)
- [Evidential Deep Learning to Quantify Classification Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.01768/) (2018)
- [DeepSeek LLM: Scaling Open-Source Language Models with Longtermism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.02954/) (2024)
- [Exploring Generalization in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.08947/) (2017)
- [KITTI-360: A Novel Dataset and Benchmarks for Urban Scene Understanding in 2D and 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.13410/) (2021)
- [From Coarse to Fine: Robust Hierarchical Localization at Large Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03506/) (2018)
- [Fine-tuning CNN Image Retrieval with No Human Annotation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.02512/) (2017)
- [End-to-end Autonomous Driving: Challenges and Frontiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16927/) (2023)
- [VINS-Mono: A Robust and Versatile Monocular Visual-Inertial State Estimator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.03852/) (2017)
- [Past, Present, and Future of Simultaneous Localization And Mapping: Towards the Robust-Perception Age](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.05830/) (2016)
- [Google Landmarks Dataset v2 -- A Large-Scale Benchmark for Instance-Level Recognition and Retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01804/) (2020)
- [Large-Scale Image Retrieval with Attentive Deep Local Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.06321/) (2016)
- [Patch-NetVLAD: Multi-Scale Fusion of Locally-Global Descriptors for Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01486/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 23 of 23)

- [LiteVLoc: Map-Lite Visual Localization for Image Goal Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.04419/) (2024)
- [Through the Lens of Doubt: Robust and Efficient Uncertainty Estimation for Visual Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13464/) (2025)
- [Vehicle-Scene Interaction: A Text-Driven 3D Lidar Place Recognition Method for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.18035/) (2025)
- [ROVER: Robust Loop Closure Verification with Trajectory Prior in Repetitive Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.13488/) (2025)
- [Quantile Transfer for Reliable Operating Point Selection in Visual Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04401/) (2026)
- [Ranking-aware Continual Learning for LiDAR Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07198/) (2025)
- [DC-VLAQ: Query-Residual Aggregation for Robust Visual Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12729/) (2026)
- [The S3LI Vulcano Dataset: A Dataset for Multi-Modal SLAM in Unstructured Planetary Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.19557/) (2026)
- [Advanced techniques and applications of LiDAR Place Recognition in Agricultural Environments: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.22198/) (2026)
- [LT-Mem: Volatility-Aware Spatio-Temporal Memory for Lifelong Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.19059/) (2026)
- [Why Sample Space Matters: Keyframe Sampling Optimization for LiDAR-based Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02643/) (2024)
- [SF-Loc: A Visual Mapping and Geo-Localization System based on Sparse Visual Structure Frames](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01500/) (2024)
- [Learning from Mistakes: Loss-Aware Memory Enhanced Continual Learning for LiDAR Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.15597/) (2025)
- [OpenNavMap: Multi-Session Appearance-Based Topometric Mapping for Scalable Visual Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12291/) (2026)
- [From Single Scan to Sequential Consistency: A New Paradigm for LIDAR Relocalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.03198/) (2026)
- [EPRBench: A High-Quality Benchmark Dataset for Event Stream Based Visual Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12919/) (2026)
- [RLPR: Radar-to-LiDAR Place Recognition via Two-Stage Asymmetric Cross-Modal Alignment for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.07920/) (2026)
- [DisPlace: Discriminative Place Projections for Multi-Reference Visual Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30769/) (2026)
- [GeoUniPR: A Geometry-Consistent Unified Framework for Cross-Modal Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.11263/) (2026)
- [LightLoc++: Sensor-Robust Representation Learning for Efficient Outdoor LiDAR Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15317/) (2026)
- [Geometry-Conditioned Visual Place Recognition in Natural Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.27370/) (2026)
- [Automotive mmWave Spinning Radar Place Recognition with Spatially Gated Feature-Correlation Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.27394/) (2026)
- [Temporal-Aware Fusion for Robust Outdoor LiDAR Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.36432/) (2026)

## 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.