# IG-SLAM: Instant Gaussian SLAM

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.01126 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01126/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 45 of its 50 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Aug 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 45)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [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)
- [RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12039/) (2020)
- [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)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (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)
- [ORB-SLAM2: an Open-Source SLAM System for Monocular, Stereo and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.06475/) (2016)
- [DROID-SLAM: Deep Visual SLAM for Monocular, Stereo, and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10869/) (2021)
- [KiloNeRF: Speeding up Neural Radiance Fields with Thousands of Tiny MLPs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13744/) (2021)
- [UNISURF: Unifying Neural Implicit Surfaces and Radiance Fields for Multi-View Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10078/) (2021)
- [NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12130/) (2021)
- [iMAP: Implicit Mapping and Positioning in Real-Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12352/) (2021)
- [Baking Neural Radiance Fields for Real-Time View Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14645/) (2021)
- [Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06741/) (2023)
- [SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02126/) (2023)
- [INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05877/) (2020)
- [Omnidata: A Scalable Pipeline for Making Multi-Task Mid-Level Vision Datasets from 3D Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04994/) (2021)
- [PGSR: Planar-based Gaussian Splatting for Efficient and High-Fidelity Surface Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.06521/) (2024)
- [GS-SLAM: Dense Visual SLAM with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11700/) (2023)
- [NeRF-SLAM: Real-Time Dense Monocular SLAM with Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13641/) (2022)
- [Co-SLAM: Joint Coordinate and Sparse Parametric Encodings for Neural Real-Time SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14377/) (2023)
- [BA-Net: Dense Bundle Adjustment Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.04807/) (2018)
- [Fourier PlenOctrees for Dynamic Radiance Field Rendering in Real-time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08614/) (2022)
- [NICER-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scene Encoding for RGB SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03594/) (2023)

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

- [MGSO: Monocular Real-time Photometric SLAM with Efficient 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.13055/) (2024)
- [CaRtGS: Computational Alignment for Real-Time Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.00486/) (2024)
- [RGBDS-SLAM: A RGB-D Semantic Dense SLAM Based on 3D Multi Level Pyramid Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.01217/) (2024)
- [RP-SLAM: Real-time Photorealistic SLAM with Efficient 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.09868/) (2024)
- [Towards Next-Generation SLAM: A Survey on 3DGS-SLAM Focusing on Performance, Robustness, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04251/) (2026)
- [From Fields to Splats: A Cross-Domain Survey of Real-Time Neural Scene Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23555/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D Gaussian Splatting has recently shown promising results as an alternative scene representation in SLAM systems to neural implicit representations. However, current methods either lack dense depth maps to supervise the mapping process or detailed training designs that consider the scale of the environment. To address these drawbacks, we present IG-SLAM, a dense RGB-only SLAM system that employs robust Dense-SLAM methods for tracking and combines them with Gaussian Splatting. A 3D map of the environment is constructed using accurate pose and dense depth provided by tracking. Additionally, we utilize depth uncertainty in map optimization to improve 3D reconstruction. Our decay strategy in map optimization enhances convergence and allows the system to run at 10 fps in a single process. We demonstrate competitive performance with state-of-the-art RGB-only SLAM systems while achieving faster operation speeds. We present our experiments on the Replica, TUM-RGBD, ScanNet, and EuRoC datasets. The system achieves photo-realistic 3D reconstruction in large-scale sequences, particularly in the EuRoC dataset.