# Reconstructing 4D Spatial Intelligence: A Survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21045 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21045/

## Key facts

- Cited by 14 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 423 of its 514 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 423)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11239/) (2020)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Neural Discrete Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00937/) (2017)
- [Learning Phrase Representations using RNN Encoder-Decoder for Statistical Machine Translation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1406.1078/) (2014)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Stable Video Diffusion: Scaling Latent Video Diffusion Models to Large Datasets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.15127/) (2023)
- [Video Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.03458/) (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)
- [Imagen Video: High Definition Video Generation with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02303/) (2022)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [Reformer: The Efficient Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.04451/) (2020)
- [Expressive Body Capture: 3D Hands, Face, and Body from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.05866/) (2019)
- [Generative Adversarial Imitation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.03476/) (2016)
- [pixelNeRF: Neural Radiance Fields from One or Few Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.02190/) (2020)
- [DUSt3R: Geometric 3D Vision Made Easy](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14132/) (2023)
- [VGGT: Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11651/) (2025)
- [D-NeRF: Neural Radiance Fields for Dynamic Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.13961/) (2020)
- [SuperGlue: Learning Feature Matching with Graph Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.11763/) (2019)
- [Depth Anything V2](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09414/) (2024)
- [SuperPoint: Self-Supervised Interest Point Detection and Description](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.07629/) (2017)
- [NeRF in the Wild: Neural Radiance Fields for Unconstrained Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.02268/) (2020)
- [Nerfies: Deformable Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12948/) (2020)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [Transformers in Vision: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.01169/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Taming Video Models for 3D and 4D Generation via Zero-Shot Camera Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.15130/) (2025)
- [Track4World: Feedforward World-centric Dense 3D Tracking of All Pixels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02573/) (2026)
- [PAGE-4D: Disentangled pose and geometry estimation for vggt-4d perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.17568/) (2025)
- [TrackingWorld: World-centric Monocular 3D Tracking of Almost All Pixels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.08358/) (2025)
- [CoMoVi: Co-Generation of 3D Human Motions and Realistic Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.10632/) (2026)
- [One Video, One World: Turning Monocular Video into Physical 4D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31388/) (2026)
- [Advances in 4D Representation: Geometry, Motion, and Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19255/) (2025)
- [HuPrior3R: Incorporating Human Priors for Better 3D Dynamic Reconstruction from Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.06368/) (2025)
- [ACE-Data-0: Human-Centric Ambient Capture as Embodied Data Engine](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.28625/) (2026)
- [How Foundational Skills Influence VLM-based Embodied Agents:A Native Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.20687/) (2026)
- [Reconstructing the Dynamic World: A Representation-Centric View of 4D Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.39960/) (2026)
- [Stitch4D: Sparse Multi-Location 4D Urban Reconstruction via Spatio-Temporal Interpolation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.07923/) (2026)
- [Real2Sim in HOI: Toward Physically Plausible HOI Reconstruction from Monocular Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.14462/) (2026)
- [PURE: Refining Feed-forward 3D Reconstruction with Unlabeled Post-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.14698/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Reconstructing 4D spatial intelligence from visual observations has long been a central yet challenging task in computer vision, with broad real-world applications. These range from entertainment domains like movies, where the focus is often on reconstructing fundamental visual elements, to embodied AI, which emphasizes interaction modeling and physical realism. Fueled by rapid advances in 3D representations and deep learning architectures, the field has evolved quickly, outpacing the scope of previous surveys. Additionally, existing surveys rarely offer a comprehensive analysis of the hierarchical structure of 4D scene reconstruction. To address this gap, we present a new perspective that organizes existing methods into five progressive levels of 4D spatial intelligence: (1) Level 1 -- reconstruction of low-level 3D attributes (e.g., depth, pose, and point maps); (2) Level 2 -- reconstruction of 3D scene components (e.g., objects, humans, structures); (3) Level 3 -- reconstruction of 4D dynamic scenes; (4) Level 4 -- modeling of interactions among scene components; and (5) Level 5 -- incorporation of physical laws and constraints. We conclude the survey by discussing the key challenges at each level and highlighting promising directions for advancing toward even richer levels of 4D spatial intelligence. To track ongoing developments, we maintain an up-to-date project page: https://github.com/yukangcao/Awesome-4D-Spatial-Intelligence.