# SE(3)-PoseFlow: Estimating 6D Pose Distributions for Uncertainty-Aware Robotic Manipulation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.01501 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.01501/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 34 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 34)

- [DINOv2: Learning Robust Visual Features without Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.07193/) (2023)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Scalable Diffusion Models with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.09748/) (2022)
- [Flow Matching for Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02747/) (2022)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [SAM 2: Segment Anything in Images and Videos](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00714/) (2024)
- [DeepSDF: Learning Continuous Signed Distance Functions for Shape Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.05103/) (2019)
- [NeuS: Learning Neural Implicit Surfaces by Volume Rendering for Multi-view Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.10689/) (2021)
- [Volume Rendering of Neural Implicit Surfaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12052/) (2021)
- [A Point Set Generation Network for 3D Object Reconstruction from a Single Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00603/) (2016)
- [PoseCNN: A Convolutional Neural Network for 6D Object Pose Estimation in Cluttered Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00199/) (2017)
- [Implicit Geometric Regularization for Learning Shapes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10099/) (2020)
- [Normalized Object Coordinate Space for Category-Level 6D Object Pose and Size Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02970/) (2019)
- [FoundationPose: Unified 6D Pose Estimation and Tracking of Novel Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.08344/) (2023)
- [Flow Matching on General Geometries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03660/) (2023)
- [Shape Prior Deformation for Categorical 6D Object Pose and Size Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.08454/) (2020)
- [SE(3)-Stochastic Flow Matching for Protein Backbone Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.02391/) (2023)
- [FlowMM: Generating Materials with Riemannian Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04713/) (2024)
- [DualPoseNet: Category-level 6D Object Pose and Size Estimation Using Dual Pose Network with Refined Learning of Pose Consistency](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.06526/) (2021)
- [CNOS: A Strong Baseline for CAD-based Novel Object Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.11067/) (2023)
- [Explaining the Ambiguity of Object Detection and 6D Pose From Visual Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.00287/) (2018)
- [Riemannian Flow Matching Policy for Robot Motion Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10672/) (2024)
- [Affordance-based Robot Manipulation with Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.01083/) (2024)
- [GenPose: Generative Category-level Object Pose Estimation via Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10531/) (2023)
- [Deep Directional Statistics: Pose Estimation with Uncertainty Quantification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.03430/) (2018)
- [Deep Bingham Networks: Dealing with Uncertainty and Ambiguity in Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.11002/) (2020)
- [ActionFlow: Equivariant, Accurate, and Efficient Policies with Spatially Symmetric Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.04576/) (2024)
- [DiffusionNOCS: Managing Symmetry and Uncertainty in Sim2Real Multi-Modal Category-level Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12647/) (2024)
- [Learning Orientation Distributions for Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.01418/) (2020)
- [Confronting Ambiguity in 6D Object Pose Estimation via Score-Based Diffusion on SE(3)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15873/) (2023)

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

- [Generative 6D Pose Estimation via Conditional Flow Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19719/) (2026)
- [Towards a Modular Bin-picking Framework for Handling Object Pose Uncertainties](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.13698/) (2026)
- [Foundational feature fusion for conditional flow matching in 6D pose estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29183/) (2026)
- [BridgeMatch: Conditional Transport Bridges in Matching Matrix Space for 3D Deformable Registration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11472/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Object pose estimation is a fundamental problem in robotics and computer vision, yet it remains challenging due to partial observability, occlusions, and object symmetries, which inevitably lead to pose ambiguity and multiple hypotheses consistent with the same observation. While deterministic deep networks achieve impressive performance under well-constrained conditions, they are often overconfident and fail to capture the multi-modality of the underlying pose distribution. To address these challenges, we propose a novel probabilistic framework that leverages flow matching on the SE(3) manifold for estimating 6D object pose distributions. Unlike existing methods that regress a single deterministic output, our approach models the full pose distribution with a sample-based estimate and enables reasoning about uncertainty in ambiguous cases such as symmetric objects or severe occlusions. We achieve state-of-the-art results on Real275, YCB-V, and LM-O, and demonstrate how our sample-based pose estimates can be leveraged in downstream robotic manipulation tasks such as active perception for disambiguating uncertain viewpoints or guiding grasp synthesis in an uncertainty-aware manner.