# Distilling 3D distinctive local descriptors for 6D pose estimation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.15106 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.15106/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 45 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 19 Mar 2025.

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

- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [ShapeNet: An Information-Rich 3D Model Repository](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03012/) (2015)
- [Dynamic Graph CNN for Learning on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07829/) (2018)
- [Knowledge Distillation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.05525/) (2020)
- [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)
- [PoseCNN: A Convolutional Neural Network for 6D Object Pose Estimation in Cluttered Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00199/) (2017)
- [Objaverse-XL: A Universe of 10M+ 3D Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05663/) (2023)
- [Open3D: A Modern Library for 3D Data Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09847/) (2018)
- [Google Scanned Objects: A High-Quality Dataset of 3D Scanned Household Items](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.11918/) (2022)
- [Point Transformer V3: Simpler, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10035/) (2023)
- [Geometric deep learning on graphs and manifolds using mixture model CNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.08402/) (2016)
- [PointNeXt: Revisiting PointNet++ with Improved Training and Scaling Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.04670/) (2022)
- [FoundationPose: Unified 6D Pose Estimation and Tracking of Novel Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08344/) (2023)
- [BOP: Benchmark for 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.08319/) (2018)
- [T-LESS: An RGB-D Dataset for 6D Pose Estimation of Texture-less Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.05498/) (2017)
- [MegaPose: 6D Pose Estimation of Novel Objects via Render & Compare](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.06870/) (2022)
- [BOP Challenge 2020 on 6D Object Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.07378/) (2020)
- [PPFNet: Global Context Aware Local Features for Robust 3D Point Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.02669/) (2018)
- [SplineCNN: Fast Geometric Deep Learning with Continuous B-Spline Kernels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08920/) (2017)
- [SpinNet: Learning a General Surface Descriptor for 3D Point Cloud Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12149/) (2020)
- [PPF-FoldNet: Unsupervised Learning of Rotation Invariant 3D Local Descriptors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.10322/) (2018)
- [SAM-6D: Segment Anything Model Meets Zero-Shot 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15707/) (2023)
- [GigaPose: Fast and Robust Novel Object Pose Estimation via One Correspondence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.14155/) (2023)
- [FoundPose: Unseen Object Pose Estimation with Foundation Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18809/) (2023)
- [REGTR: End-to-end Point Cloud Correspondences with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.14517/) (2022)
- [Recovering 6D Object Pose and Predicting Next-Best-View in the Crowd](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.07506/) (2015)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Accurate and efficient zero-shot 6D pose estimation with frozen foundation models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09784/) (2025)
- [Generative 6D Pose Estimation via Conditional Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19719/) (2026)
- [Foundational feature fusion for conditional flow matching in 6D pose estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29183/) (2026)
- [Prior-free relative 6D pose estimation of multiple object instances](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.08949/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Three-dimensional local descriptors are crucial for encoding geometric surface properties, making them essential for various point cloud understanding tasks. Among these descriptors, GeDi has demonstrated strong zero-shot 6D pose estimation capabilities but remains computationally impractical for real-world applications due to its expensive inference process. Can we retain GeDi's effectiveness while significantly improving its efficiency? In this paper, we explore this question by introducing a knowledge distillation framework that trains an efficient student model to regress local descriptors from a GeDi teacher. Our key contributions include: an efficient large-scale training procedure that ensures robustness to occlusions and partial observations while operating under compute and storage constraints, and a novel loss formulation that handles weak supervision from non-distinctive teacher descriptors. We validate our approach on five BOP Benchmark datasets and demonstrate a significant reduction in inference time while maintaining competitive performance with existing methods, bringing zero-shot 6D pose estimation closer to real-time feasibility. Project Website: https://tev-fbk.github.io/dGeDi/