# GeoNLF: Geometry guided Pose-Free Neural LiDAR Fields

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.05597 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.05597/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 51 of its 71 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 51)

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Instant Neural Graphics Primitives with a Multiresolution Hash Encoding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.05989/) (2022)
- [CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03938/) (2017)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (2021)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09517/) (2022)
- [Efficient Geometry-aware 3D Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07945/) (2021)
- [Depth-supervised NeRF: Fewer Views and Faster Training for Free](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.02791/) (2021)
- [UNISURF: Unifying Neural Implicit Surfaces and Radiance Fields for Multi-View Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10078/) (2021)
- [BARF: Bundle-Adjusting Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.06405/) (2021)
- [RegNeRF: Regularizing Neural Radiance Fields for View Synthesis from Sparse Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00724/) (2021)
- [KITTI-360: A Novel Dataset and Benchmarks for Urban Scene Understanding in 2D and 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.13410/) (2021)
- [AirSim: High-Fidelity Visual and Physical Simulation for Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.05065/) (2017)
- [MonoSDF: Exploring Monocular Geometric Cues for Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.00665/) (2022)
- [INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05877/) (2020)
- [Deep Closest Point: Learning Representations for Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.03304/) (2019)
- [Dense Depth Priors for Neural Radiance Fields from Sparse Input Views](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.03288/) (2021)
- [UniSim: A Neural Closed-Loop Sensor Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.01898/) (2023)
- [NoPe-NeRF: Optimising Neural Radiance Field with No Pose Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.07388/) (2022)
- [PointNetLK: Robust & Efficient Point Cloud Registration using PointNet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.05711/) (2019)
- [Geometric Transformer for Fast and Robust Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.06688/) (2022)
- [SPARF: Neural Radiance Fields from Sparse and Noisy Poses](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11738/) (2022)
- [Robust Dynamic Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.02239/) (2023)
- [NerfingMVS: Guided Optimization of Neural Radiance Fields for Indoor Multi-view Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.01129/) (2021)
- [Tri-MipRF: Tri-Mip Representation for Efficient Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11335/) (2023)
- [LiDARsim: Realistic LiDAR Simulation by Leveraging the Real World](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09348/) (2020)
- [Feature-metric Registration: A Fast Semi-supervised Approach for Robust Point Cloud Registration without Correspondences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.01014/) (2020)
- [DeepGMR: Learning Latent Gaussian Mixture Models for Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.09088/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [RealEngine: Simulating Autonomous Driving in Realistic Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.16902/) (2025)
- [Signal Structure-Aware Gaussian Splatting for Large-Scale Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.01698/) (2026)
- [Physically Based Neural LiDAR Resimulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.12489/) (2025)
- [LiDARDraft: Generating LiDAR Point Cloud from Versatile Inputs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.20105/) (2025)
- [Neural-MMGS: Multi-modal Neural Gaussian Splats for Large-Scale Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17762/) (2025)
- [Spectral-Geometric Neural Fields for Pose-Free LiDAR View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.12903/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Although recent efforts have extended Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) into LiDAR point cloud synthesis, the majority of existing works exhibit a strong dependence on precomputed poses. However, point cloud registration methods struggle to achieve precise global pose estimation, whereas previous pose-free NeRFs overlook geometric consistency in global reconstruction. In light of this, we explore the geometric insights of point clouds, which provide explicit registration priors for reconstruction. Based on this, we propose Geometry guided Neural LiDAR Fields(GeoNLF), a hybrid framework performing alternately global neural reconstruction and pure geometric pose optimization. Furthermore, NeRFs tend to overfit individual frames and easily get stuck in local minima under sparse-view inputs. To tackle this issue, we develop a selective-reweighting strategy and introduce geometric constraints for robust optimization. Extensive experiments on NuScenes and KITTI-360 datasets demonstrate the superiority of GeoNLF in both novel view synthesis and multi-view registration of low-frequency large-scale point clouds.