# GaussianFlowOcc: Sparse and Weakly Supervised Occupancy Estimation using Gaussian Splatting and Temporal Flow

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.17288 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.17288/

## Key facts

- Cited by 24 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 73 of its 81 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Feb 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 73)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Emerging Properties in Self-Supervised Vision Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14294/) (2021)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [Mip-NeRF: A Multiscale Representation for Anti-Aliasing Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13415/) (2021)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [BEVFormer: Learning Bird's-Eye-View Representation from Multi-Camera Images via Spatiotemporal Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17270/) (2022)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [Grounded SAM: Assembling Open-World Models for Diverse Visual Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14159/) (2024)
- [K-Planes: Explicit Radiance Fields in Space, Time, and Appearance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.10241/) (2023)
- [MVSNeRF: Fast Generalizable Radiance Field Reconstruction from Multi-View Stereo](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.15595/) (2021)
- [BEVDet: High-performance Multi-camera 3D Object Detection in Bird-Eye-View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11790/) (2021)
- [Extract Free Dense Labels from CLIP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01071/) (2021)
- [MVSplat: Efficient 3D Gaussian Splatting from Sparse Multi-View Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.14627/) (2024)
- [PETR: Position Embedding Transformation for Multi-View 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.05625/) (2022)
- [LERF: Language Embedded Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09553/) (2023)
- [Point-NeRF: Point-based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08845/) (2022)
- [LangSplat: 3D Language Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16084/) (2023)
- [Tri-Perspective View for Vision-Based 3D Semantic Occupancy Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07817/) (2023)
- [Metric3D: Towards Zero-shot Metric 3D Prediction from A Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.10984/) (2023)
- [Feature 3DGS: Supercharging 3D Gaussian Splatting to Enable Distilled Feature Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03203/) (2023)
- [MonoScene: Monocular 3D Semantic Scene Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00726/) (2021)
- [DrivingGaussian: Composite Gaussian Splatting for Surrounding Dynamic Autonomous Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07920/) (2023)
- [BEVDet4D: Exploit Temporal Cues in Multi-camera 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17054/) (2022)
- [Occ3D: A Large-Scale 3D Occupancy Prediction Benchmark for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14365/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 24 of 24)

- [GS-Occ3D: Scaling Vision-only Occupancy Reconstruction with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19451/) (2025)
- [Semantic Causality-Aware Vision-Based 3D Occupancy Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.08388/) (2025)
- [OneOcc: Semantic Occupancy Prediction for Legged Robots with a Single Panoramic Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.03571/) (2025)
- [Foundation Models for Autonomous Driving Perception: A Survey Through Core Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.08302/) (2025)
- [ShelfOcc: Native 3D Supervision beyond LiDAR for Vision-Based Occupancy Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.15396/) (2025)
- [SQS: Enhancing Sparse Perception Models via Query-based Splatting in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16588/) (2025)
- [Progressive Gaussian Transformer with Anisotropy-aware Sampling for Open Vocabulary Occupancy Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.04759/) (2025)
- [Forging Spatial Intelligence: A Roadmap of Multi-Modal Data Pre-Training for Autonomous Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.24385/) (2025)
- [ODG: Occupancy Prediction Using Dual Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09417/) (2025)
- [ShelfGaussian: Shelf-Supervised Open-Vocabulary Gaussian-based 3D Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03370/) (2025)
- [Out-of-Distribution Semantic Occupancy Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.21185/) (2025)
- [Easy3D-Labels: Supervising Semantic Occupancy Estimation with 3D Pseudo-Labels for Automotive Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.26087/) (2025)
- [QueryOcc: Query-based Self-Supervision for 3D Semantic Occupancy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.17221/) (2025)
- [DLWM: Dual Latent World Models enable Holistic Gaussian-centric Pre-training in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.00969/) (2026)
- [FreeOcc: Training-Free Embodied Open-Vocabulary Occupancy Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.28115/) (2026)
- [BePo: Dual Representation for 3D Occupancy Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.07002/) (2025)
- [VEOcc: Voxel-Centric Online Semantic Occupancy Prediction For Embodied Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.25059/) (2026)
- [SuperQuadricOcc: Real-Time Self-Supervised Semantic Occupancy Estimation with Superquadric Volume Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.17361/) (2025)
- [HyGE-Occ: Hybrid View-Transformation with 3D Gaussian and Edge Priors for 3D Panoptic Occupancy Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.19871/) (2025)
- [FreeOcc: Training-free Panoptic Occupancy Prediction via Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.06166/) (2026)
- [GEM: Gaussian Evolution Model for Occupancy Forecasting and Motion Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.17682/) (2026)
- [Deformable Gaussian Occupancy: Decoupling Rigid and Nonrigid Motion with Factorized Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.28587/) (2026)
- [LetOccVote: Learning Weakly Supervised 3D Occupancy through Consensus](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.04846/) (2026)
- [TriO: Tri-Modal Unsupervised Occupancy World Model for Anything Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32013/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Occupancy estimation has become a prominent task in 3D computer vision, particularly within the autonomous driving community. In this paper, we present a novel approach to occupancy estimation, termed GaussianFlowOcc, which is inspired by Gaussian Splatting and replaces traditional dense voxel grids with a sparse 3D Gaussian representation. Our efficient model architecture based on a Gaussian Transformer significantly reduces computational and memory requirements by eliminating the need for expensive 3D convolutions used with inefficient voxel-based representations that predominantly represent empty 3D spaces. GaussianFlowOcc effectively captures scene dynamics by estimating temporal flow for each Gaussian during the overall network training process, offering a straightforward solution to a complex problem that is often neglected by existing methods. Moreover, GaussianFlowOcc is designed for scalability, as it employs weak supervision and does not require costly dense 3D voxel annotations based on additional data (e.g., LiDAR). Through extensive experimentation, we demonstrate that GaussianFlowOcc significantly outperforms all previous methods for weakly supervised occupancy estimation on the nuScenes dataset while featuring an inference speed that is 50 times faster than current SOTA.