# ConfidentSplat: Confidence-Weighted Depth Fusion for Accurate 3D Gaussian Splatting SLAM

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.16863 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.16863/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Sep 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Deep Features as a Perceptual Metric](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03924/) (2018)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [ScanNet: Richly-annotated 3D Reconstructions of Indoor Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.04405/) (2017)
- [RAFT: Recurrent All-Pairs Field Transforms for Optical Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.12039/) (2020)
- [Neural Sparse Voxel Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11571/) (2020)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [DROID-SLAM: Deep Visual SLAM for Monocular, Stereo, and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10869/) (2021)
- [Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06741/) (2023)
- [SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02126/) (2023)
- [Omnidata: A Scalable Pipeline for Making Multi-Task Mid-Level Vision Datasets from 3D Scans](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04994/) (2021)
- [GS-SLAM: Dense Visual SLAM with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11700/) (2023)
- [NeRF-SLAM: Real-Time Dense Monocular SLAM with Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13641/) (2022)
- [NICER-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scene Encoding for RGB SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03594/) (2023)
- [Gaussian-SLAM: Photo-realistic Dense SLAM with Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10070/) (2023)
- [Voxblox: Incremental 3D Euclidean Signed Distance Fields for On-Board MAV Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.03631/) (2016)
- [Vox-Fusion: Dense Tracking and Mapping with Voxel-based Neural Implicit Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.15858/) (2022)
- [Photo-SLAM: Real-time Simultaneous Localization and Photorealistic Mapping for Monocular, Stereo, and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16728/) (2023)
- [GO-SLAM: Global Optimization for Consistent 3D Instant Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.02436/) (2023)
- [BundleFusion: Real-time Globally Consistent 3D Reconstruction using On-the-fly Surface Re-integration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01093/) (2016)
- [Splat-SLAM: Globally Optimized RGB-only SLAM with 3D Gaussians](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.16544/) (2024)
- [RGBD GS-ICP SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.12550/) (2024)
- [CG-SLAM: Efficient Dense RGB-D SLAM in a Consistent Uncertainty-aware 3D Gaussian Field](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.16095/) (2024)
- [Loopy-SLAM: Dense Neural SLAM with Loop Closures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.09944/) (2024)
- [Dense RGB SLAM with Neural Implicit Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.08930/) (2023)
- [GlORIE-SLAM: Globally Optimized RGB-only Implicit Encoding Point Cloud SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19549/) (2024)
- [HI-SLAM: Monocular Real-time Dense Mapping with Hybrid Implicit Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04787/) (2023)
- [LIV-GaussMap: LiDAR-Inertial-Visual Fusion for Real-time 3D Radiance Field Map Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14857/) (2024)
- [MIPS-Fusion: Multi-Implicit-Submaps for Scalable and Robust Online Neural RGB-D Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08741/) (2023)
- [MoD-SLAM: Monocular Dense Mapping for Unbounded 3D Scene Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03762/) (2024)
- [NEWTON: Neural View-Centric Mapping for On-the-Fly Large-Scale SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13654/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce ConfidentSplat, a novel 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS)-based SLAM system for robust, highfidelity RGB-only reconstruction. Addressing geometric inaccuracies in existing RGB-only 3DGS SLAM methods that stem from unreliable depth estimation, ConfidentSplat incorporates a core innovation: a confidence-weighted fusion mechanism. This mechanism adaptively integrates depth cues from multiview geometry with learned monocular priors (Omnidata ViT), dynamically weighting their contributions based on explicit reliability estimates-derived predominantly from multi-view geometric consistency-to generate high-fidelity proxy depth for map supervision. The resulting proxy depth guides the optimization of a deformable 3DGS map, which efficiently adapts online to maintain global consistency following pose updates from a DROID-SLAM-inspired frontend and backend optimizations (loop closure, global bundle adjustment). Extensive validation on standard benchmarks (TUM-RGBD, ScanNet) and diverse custom mobile datasets demonstrates significant improvements in reconstruction accuracy (L1 depth error) and novel view synthesis fidelity (PSNR, SSIM, LPIPS) over baselines, particularly in challenging conditions. ConfidentSplat underscores the efficacy of principled, confidence-aware sensor fusion for advancing state-of-the-art dense visual SLAM.