# BUFFER-X: Towards Zero-Shot Point Cloud Registration in Diverse Scenes

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.07940 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.07940/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 53 of its 97 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 11 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 53)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [4D Spatio-Temporal ConvNets: Minkowski Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08755/) (2019)
- [KPConv: Flexible and Deformable Convolution for Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08889/) (2019)
- [ScanNet++: A High-Fidelity Dataset of 3D Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11417/) (2023)
- [Point Transformer V3: Simpler, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10035/) (2023)
- [Cylindrical and Asymmetrical 3D Convolution Networks for LiDAR Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10033/) (2020)
- [Point Transformer V2: Grouped Vector Attention and Partition-based Pooling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.05666/) (2022)
- [PREDATOR: Registration of 3D Point Clouds with Low Overlap](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13005/) (2020)
- [TEASER: Fast and Certifiable Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07715/) (2020)
- [A General and Adaptive Robust Loss Function](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.03077/) (2017)
- [Deep Global Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11540/) (2020)
- [D3Feat: Joint Learning of Dense Detection and Description of 3D Local Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.03164/) (2020)
- [Go-ICP: A Globally Optimal Solution to 3D ICP Point-Set Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.03344/) (2016)
- [CoFiNet: Reliable Coarse-to-fine Correspondences for Robust Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.14076/) (2021)
- [SpinNet: Learning a General Surface Descriptor for 3D Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12149/) (2020)
- [KISS-ICP: In Defense of Point-to-Point ICP -- Simple, Accurate, and Robust Registration If Done the Right Way](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15397/) (2022)
- [3DFeat-Net: Weakly Supervised Local 3D Features for Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.09413/) (2018)
- [Graduated Non-Convexity for Robust Spatial Perception: From Non-Minimal Solvers to Global Outlier Rejection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.08605/) (2019)
- [3D Registration with Maximal Cliques](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10854/) (2023)
- [GeoTransformer: Fast and Robust Point Cloud Registration with Geometric Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03768/) (2023)
- [Only Train Once: A One-Shot Neural Network Training And Pruning Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07467/) (2021)
- [LCDNet: Deep Loop Closure Detection and Point Cloud Registration for LiDAR SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.05056/) (2021)
- [The Newer College Dataset: Handheld LiDAR, Inertial and Vision with Ground Truth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.05691/) (2020)
- [Learning general and distinctive 3D local deep descriptors for point cloud registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.10382/) (2021)
- [A Survey on Global LiDAR Localization: Challenges, Advances and Open Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07433/) (2023)
- [A Polynomial-time Solution for Robust Registration with Extreme Outlier Rates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.08588/) (2019)
- [Patchwork: Concentric Zone-based Region-wise Ground Segmentation with Ground Likelihood Estimation Using a 3D LiDAR Sensor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.05560/) (2021)
- [Distinctive 3D local deep descriptors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.00258/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [Register Any Point: Scaling 3D Point Cloud Registration by Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.01850/) (2025)
- [RARE: Refine Any Registration of Pairwise Point Clouds via Zero-Shot Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19950/) (2025)
- [Toward Zero-Shot Point Cloud Registration Across Diverse Scales, Scenes, and Sensor Setups](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.02759/) (2026)
- [Long-Term Multi-Session 3D Reconstruction Under Substantial Appearance Change](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.20584/) (2026)
- [Paired-CSLiDAR: Height-Stratified Registration for Cross-Source Aerial-Ground LiDAR Pose Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00634/) (2026)
- [PROSE: Training-Free Egocentric Scene Registration with Vision-Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.16569/) (2026)
- [CVSD-Reg: Cross-Modal Visual Semantic Prior Distillation for Robust LiDAR Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.19536/) (2026)
- [BridgeMatch: Conditional Transport Bridges in Matching Matrix Space for 3D Deformable Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11472/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Recent advances in deep learning-based point cloud registration have improved generalization, yet most methods still require retraining or manual parameter tuning for each new environment. In this paper, we identify three key factors limiting generalization: (a) reliance on environment-specific voxel size and search radius, (b) poor out-of-domain robustness of learning-based keypoint detectors, and (c) raw coordinate usage, which exacerbates scale discrepancies. To address these issues, we present a zero-shot registration pipeline called BUFFER-X by (a) adaptively determining voxel size/search radii, (b) using farthest point sampling to bypass learned detectors, and (c) leveraging patch-wise scale normalization for consistent coordinate bounds. In particular, we present a multi-scale patch-based descriptor generation and a hierarchical inlier search across scales to improve robustness in diverse scenes. We also propose a novel generalizability benchmark using 11 datasets that cover various indoor/outdoor scenarios and sensor modalities, demonstrating that BUFFER-X achieves substantial generalization without prior information or manual parameter tuning for the test datasets. Our code is available at https://github.com/MIT-SPARK/BUFFER-X.