# Quantifying Epistemic Uncertainty in Absolute Pose Regression

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.07260 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07260/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 31 of its 44 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Apr 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [On the Continuity of Rotation Representations in Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07035/) (2018)
- [An Introduction to Variational Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.02691/) (2019)
- [NetVLAD: CNN architecture for weakly supervised place recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.07247/) (2015)
- [From Coarse to Fine: Robust Hierarchical Localization at Large Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03506/) (2018)
- [Image Matching across Wide Baselines: From Paper to Practice](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01587/) (2020)
- [Geometric Loss Functions for Camera Pose Regression with Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.00390/) (2017)
- [Understanding the Limitations of CNN-based Absolute Camera Pose Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07504/) (2019)
- [Visual Camera Re-Localization from RGB and RGB-D Images Using DSAC](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.12324/) (2020)
- [Geometry-Aware Learning of Maps for Camera Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.03342/) (2017)
- [Learning Less is More - 6D Camera Localization via 3D Surface Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10228/) (2017)
- [Image-based localization using LSTMs for structured feature correlation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07890/) (2016)
- [Modelling Uncertainty in Deep Learning for Camera Relocalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.05909/) (2015)
- [LENS: Localization enhanced by NeRF synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06558/) (2021)
- [Learning Multi-Scene Absolute Pose Regression with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.11468/) (2021)
- [AtLoc: Attention Guided Camera Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.03557/) (2019)
- [An Uncertain Future: Forecasting from Static Images using Variational Autoencoders](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.07873/) (2016)
- [DFNet: Enhance Absolute Pose Regression with Direct Feature Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.00559/) (2022)
- [Image-based Localization using Hourglass Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.07971/) (2017)
- [Direct-PoseNet: Absolute Pose Regression with Photometric Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.04073/) (2021)
- [Deep Bingham Networks: Dealing with Uncertainty and Ambiguity in Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.11002/) (2020)
- [CoordiNet: uncertainty-aware pose regressor for reliable vehicle localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.10796/) (2021)
- [Reassessing the Limitations of CNN Methods for Camera Pose Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07260/) (2021)
- [HR-APR: APR-agnostic Framework with Uncertainty Estimation and Hierarchical Refinement for Camera Relocalisation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.14371/) (2024)
- [MCD: Diverse Large-Scale Multi-Campus Dataset for Robot Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11496/) (2024)
- [A Probabilistic Framework for Visual Localization in Ambiguous Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.02086/) (2023)
- [VIZARD: Reliable Visual Localization for Autonomous Vehicles in Urban Outdoor Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.04343/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Visual relocalization is the task of estimating the camera pose given an image it views. Absolute pose regression offers a solution to this task by training a neural network, directly regressing the camera pose from image features. While an attractive solution in terms of memory and compute efficiency, absolute pose regression's predictions are inaccurate and unreliable outside the training domain. In this work, we propose a novel method for quantifying the epistemic uncertainty of an absolute pose regression model by estimating the likelihood of observations within a variational framework. Beyond providing a measure of confidence in predictions, our approach offers a unified model that also handles observation ambiguities, probabilistically localizing the camera in the presence of repetitive structures. Our method outperforms existing approaches in capturing the relation between uncertainty and prediction error.