# SplatPose: Geometry-Aware 6-DoF Pose Estimation from Single RGB Image via 3D Gaussian Splatting

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.05174 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05174/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 32 of its 41 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [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)
- [Sinkhorn Distances: Lightspeed Computation of Optimal Transportation Distances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1306.0895/) (2013)
- [Fourier Features Let Networks Learn High Frequency Functions in Low Dimensional Domains](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10739/) (2020)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [TensoRF: Tensorial Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09517/) (2022)
- [LoFTR: Detector-Free Local Feature Matching with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00680/) (2021)
- [Adafactor: Adaptive Learning Rates with Sublinear Memory Cost](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.04235/) (2018)
- [Deformable 3D Gaussians for High-Fidelity Monocular Dynamic Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13101/) (2023)
- [Mip-Splatting: Alias-free 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16493/) (2023)
- [PVNet: Pixel-wise Voting Network for 6DoF Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.11788/) (2018)
- [INeRF: Inverting Neural Radiance Fields for Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.05877/) (2020)
- [Deep Object Pose Estimation for Semantic Robotic Grasping of Household Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.10790/) (2018)
- [PVN3D: A Deep Point-wise 3D Keypoints Voting Network for 6DoF Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.04231/) (2019)
- [Implicit 3D Orientation Learning for 6D Object Detection from RGB Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.01275/) (2019)
- [OnePose++: Keypoint-Free One-Shot Object Pose Estimation without CAD Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.07673/) (2023)
- [Hierarchical Scene Coordinate Classification and Regression for Visual Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06216/) (2019)
- [Learning to Navigate the Energy Landscape](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1603.05772/) (2016)
- [Parallel Inversion of Neural Radiance Fields for Robust Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.10108/) (2022)
- [CROSSFIRE: Camera Relocalization On Self-Supervised Features from an Implicit Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.04869/) (2023)
- [SplatLoc: 3D Gaussian Splatting-based Visual Localization for Augmented Reality](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14067/) (2024)
- [Single-Stage Keypoint-Based Category-Level Object Pose Estimation from an RGB Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.06161/) (2021)
- [NeMo: Neural Mesh Models of Contrastive Features for Robust 3D Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.12378/) (2021)
- [TransforMatcher: Match-to-Match Attention for Semantic Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.11634/) (2022)
- [6DGS: 6D Pose Estimation from a Single Image and a 3D Gaussian Splatting Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.15484/) (2024)
- [Self-Supervised Equivariant Learning for Oriented Keypoint Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08613/) (2022)
- [Learning Rotation-Equivariant Features for Visual Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15472/) (2023)
- [PNeRFLoc: Visual Localization with Point-based Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10649/) (2023)
- [VoGE: A Differentiable Volume Renderer using Gaussian Ellipsoids for Analysis-by-Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.15401/) (2022)
- [3DGS-ReLoc: 3D Gaussian Splatting for Map Representation and Visual ReLocalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11367/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Camera Pose Refinement via 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17876/) (2025)
- [OMUDA: Omni-level Masking for Unsupervised Domain Adaptation in Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.12303/) (2025)
- [Thinker-WM: A Unified World Model with Shared Multimodal Representations for Embodied Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.18447/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

6-DoF pose estimation is a fundamental task in computer vision with wide-ranging applications in augmented reality and robotics. Existing single RGB-based methods often compromise accuracy due to their reliance on initial pose estimates and susceptibility to rotational ambiguity, while approaches requiring depth sensors or multi-view setups incur significant deployment costs. To address these limitations, we introduce SplatPose, a novel framework that synergizes 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) with a dual-branch neural architecture to achieve high-precision pose estimation using only a single RGB image. Central to our approach is the Dual-Attention Ray Scoring Network (DARS-Net), which innovatively decouples positional and angular alignment through geometry-domain attention mechanisms, explicitly modeling directional dependencies to mitigate rotational ambiguity. Additionally, a coarse-to-fine optimization pipeline progressively refines pose estimates by aligning dense 2D features between query images and 3DGS-synthesized views, effectively correcting feature misalignment and depth errors from sparse ray sampling. Experiments on three benchmark datasets demonstrate that SplatPose achieves state-of-the-art 6-DoF pose estimation accuracy in single RGB settings, rivaling approaches that depend on depth or multi-view images.