# TranSplat: Surface Embedding-guided 3D Gaussian Splatting for Transparent Object Manipulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.07840 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.07840/

## Key facts

- Cited by 10 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Feb 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Adding Conditional Control to Text-to-Image Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.05543/) (2023)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [Deformable 3D Gaussians for High-Fidelity Monocular Dynamic Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13101/) (2023)
- [SuGaR: Surface-Aligned Gaussian Splatting for Efficient 3D Mesh Reconstruction and High-Quality Mesh Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.12775/) (2023)
- [Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06741/) (2023)
- [DiffusionDet: Diffusion Model for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09788/) (2022)
- [Repurposing Diffusion-Based Image Generators for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02145/) (2023)
- [NoMaD: Goal Masked Diffusion Policies for Navigation and Exploration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.07896/) (2023)
- [ClearGrasp: 3D Shape Estimation of Transparent Objects for Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.02550/) (2019)
- [Dex-NeRF: Using a Neural Radiance Field to Grasp Transparent Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14217/) (2021)
- [The Surprising Effectiveness of Diffusion Models for Optical Flow and Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01923/) (2023)
- [SurfEmb: Dense and Continuous Correspondence Distributions for Object Pose Estimation with Learnt Surface Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13489/) (2021)
- [RGB-D Local Implicit Function for Depth Completion of Transparent Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00622/) (2021)
- [TransCG: A Large-Scale Real-World Dataset for Transparent Object Depth Completion and a Grasping Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08471/) (2022)
- [ZeroWaste Dataset: Towards Deformable Object Segmentation in Cluttered Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02740/) (2021)
- [ClearPose: Large-scale Transparent Object Dataset and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03890/) (2022)
- [PhoCaL: A Multi-Modal Dataset for Category-Level Object Pose Estimation with Photometrically Challenging Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.08811/) (2022)
- [Glass Segmentation with RGB-Thermal Image Pairs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05453/) (2022)
- [6D-Diff: A Keypoint Diffusion Framework for 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.00029/) (2023)
- [NeRRF: 3D Reconstruction and View Synthesis for Transparent and Specular Objects with Neural Refractive-Reflective Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13039/) (2023)
- [TRansPose: Large-Scale Multispectral Dataset for Transparent Object](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05016/) (2023)
- [Ambiguity-Aware Multi-Object Pose Optimization for Visually-Assisted Robot Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.00960/) (2022)
- [Multi-view object pose estimation from correspondence distributions and epipolar geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.00924/) (2022)
- [SAID-NeRF: Segmentation-AIDed NeRF for Depth Completion of Transparent Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19607/) (2024)
- [Residual-NeRF: Learning Residual NeRFs for Transparent Object Manipulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.06181/) (2024)
- [NeuSurfEmb: A Complete Pipeline for Dense Correspondence-based 6D Object Pose Estimation without CAD Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12207/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 10 of 10)

- [VolSplat: Rethinking Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian Splatting with Voxel-Aligned Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.19297/) (2025)
- [TSGS: Improving Gaussian Splatting for Transparent Surface Reconstruction via Normal and De-lighting Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12799/) (2025)
- [TinySplat: Feedforward Approach for Generating Compact 3D Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09479/) (2025)
- [Feed-Forward 3D Scene Modeling: A Problem-Driven Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.14025/) (2026)
- [TRAN-D: 2D Gaussian Splatting-based Sparse-view Transparent Object Depth Reconstruction via Physics Simulation for Scene Update](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.11069/) (2025)
- [From Fields to Splats: A Cross-Domain Survey of Real-Time Neural Scene Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23555/) (2025)
- [Fix False Transparency by Noise Guided Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.15736/) (2025)
- [AdaptSplat: Adapting Vision Foundation Models for Feed-Forward 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10239/) (2026)
- [SwiftGS: Episodic Priors for Immediate Satellite Surface Recovery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.18634/) (2026)
- [GLINT: Modeling Scene-Scale Transparency via Gaussian Radiance Transport](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26181/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Transparent object manipulation remains a significant challenge in robotics due to the difficulty of acquiring accurate and dense depth measurements. Conventional depth sensors often fail with transparent objects, resulting in incomplete or erroneous depth data. Existing depth completion methods struggle with interframe consistency and incorrectly model transparent objects as Lambertian surfaces, leading to poor depth reconstruction. To address these challenges, we propose TranSplat, a surface embedding-guided 3D Gaussian Splatting method tailored for transparent objects. TranSplat uses a latent diffusion model to generate surface embeddings that provide consistent and continuous representations, making it robust to changes in viewpoint and lighting. By integrating these surface embeddings with input RGB images, TranSplat effectively captures the complexities of transparent surfaces, enhancing the splatting of 3D Gaussians and improving depth completion. Evaluations on synthetic and real-world transparent object benchmarks, as well as robot grasping tasks, show that TranSplat achieves accurate and dense depth completion, demonstrating its effectiveness in practical applications. We open-source synthetic dataset and model: https://github. com/jeongyun0609/TranSplat