# Kinematify: Open-Vocabulary Synthesis of High-DoF Articulated Objects

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.01294 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01294/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 33 of its 57 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [Implicit Neural Representations with Periodic Activation Functions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09661/) (2020)
- [Implicit Geometric Regularization for Learning Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10099/) (2020)
- [SAPIEN: A SimulAted Part-based Interactive ENvironment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08515/) (2020)
- [PartNet: A Large-scale Benchmark for Fine-grained and Hierarchical Part-level 3D Object Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.02713/) (2018)
- [GET3D: A Generative Model of High Quality 3D Textured Shapes Learned from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.11163/) (2022)
- [Ditto: Building Digital Twins of Articulated Objects from Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08227/) (2022)
- [PACO: Parts and Attributes of Common Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.01795/) (2023)
- [URDFormer: A Pipeline for Constructing Articulated Simulation Environments from Real-World Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11656/) (2024)
- [Articulate-Anything: Automatic Modeling of Articulated Objects via a Vision-Language Foundation Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.13882/) (2024)
- [GPU-Accelerated Robotic Simulation for Distributed Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.05762/) (2018)
- [AKB-48: A Real-World Articulated Object Knowledge Base](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08432/) (2022)
- [Real2Code: Reconstruct Articulated Objects via Code Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.08474/) (2024)
- [SINGAPO: Single Image Controlled Generation of Articulated Parts in Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.16499/) (2024)
- [ArtGS: Building Interactable Replicas of Complex Articulated Objects via Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.19459/) (2025)
- [AssemblyHands: Towards Egocentric Activity Understanding via 3D Hand Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12301/) (2023)
- [PartGen: Part-level 3D Generation and Reconstruction with Multi-View Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.18608/) (2024)
- [HoloPart: Generative 3D Part Amodal Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07943/) (2025)
- [ANR: Articulated Neural Rendering for Virtual Avatars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.12890/) (2020)
- [GenPose: Generative Category-level Object Pose Estimation via Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10531/) (2023)
- [Efficient Part-level 3D Object Generation via Dual Volume Packing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09980/) (2025)
- [MultiBodySync: Multi-Body Segmentation and Motion Estimation via 3D Scan Synchronization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.06605/) (2021)
- [Articulate AnyMesh: Open-Vocabulary 3D Articulated Objects Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.02590/) (2025)
- [MeshArt: Generating Articulated Meshes with Structure-Guided Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11596/) (2024)
- [BANG: Dividing 3D Assets via Generative Exploded Dynamics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21493/) (2025)
- [Building Rearticulable Models for Arbitrary 3D Objects from 4D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.00979/) (2023)
- [PartNeXt: A Next-Generation Dataset for Fine-Grained and Hierarchical 3D Part Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.20155/) (2025)
- [PhysPart: Physically Plausible Part Completion for Interactable Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.13724/) (2024)
- [ARTIC3D: Learning Robust Articulated 3D Shapes from Noisy Web Image Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.04619/) (2023)
- [Interactron: Embodied Adaptive Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.00660/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [Particulate: Feed-Forward 3D Object Articulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11798/) (2025)
- [PAct: Part-Decomposed Single-View Articulated Object Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.14965/) (2026)
- [ArtLLM: Generating Articulated Assets via 3D LLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.01142/) (2026)
- [Instruct-Particulate: Scaling Feed-Forward 3D Object Articulation with Kinematic Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.14699/) (2026)
- [3D Generation for Embodied AI and Robotic Simulation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.26509/) (2026)
- [PAR3D: A Unified 3D-MLLM with Part-Aware Representation for Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.06485/) (2026)
- [NeoWorld-Pro: Programming Interactive Scenes from Monocular Images for Embodied Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.24212/) (2026)
- [ArtLang: Structured Language-to-Kinematics Grounding for Articulated 3D Actuation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.15419/) (2026)
- [Towards Physically Grounded Articulated 3D Assets: A Multi-Agent Pipeline and Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.13947/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

A deep understanding of kinematic structures and movable components is essential for enabling robots to manipulate objects and model their own articulated forms. Such understanding is captured through articulated objects, which are essential for tasks such as physical simulation, motion planning, and policy learning. However, creating these models, particularly for objects with high degrees of freedom (DoF), remains a significant challenge. Existing methods typically rely on motion sequences or strong assumptions from hand-curated datasets, which hinders scalability. In this paper, we introduce Kinematify, an automated framework that synthesizes articulated objects directly from arbitrary RGB images or textual descriptions. Our method addresses two core challenges: (i) inferring kinematic topologies for high-DoF objects and (ii) estimating joint parameters from static geometry. To achieve this, we combine MCTS search for structural inference with geometry-driven optimization for joint reasoning, producing physically consistent and functionally valid descriptions. We evaluate Kinematify on diverse inputs from both synthetic and real-world environments, demonstrating improvements in registration and kinematic topology accuracy over prior work.