# Taming the Light: Illumination-Invariant Semantic 3DGS-SLAM

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.22968 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.22968/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 25 of its 36 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [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)
- [Mip-NeRF 360: Unbounded Anti-Aliased Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.12077/) (2021)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12130/) (2021)
- [SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02126/) (2023)
- [Panoptic Neural Fields: A Semantic Object-Aware Neural Scene Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.04334/) (2022)
- [NeRF-SLAM: Real-Time Dense Monocular SLAM with Neural Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13641/) (2022)
- [Kimera: an Open-Source Library for Real-Time Metric-Semantic Localization and Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.02490/) (2019)
- [Point-SLAM: Dense Neural Point Cloud-based SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.04278/) (2023)
- [ESLAM: Efficient Dense SLAM System Based on Hybrid Representation of Signed Distance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11704/) (2022)
- [Vox-Fusion: Dense Tracking and Mapping with Voxel-based Neural Implicit Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.15858/) (2022)
- [MaskFusion: Real-Time Recognition, Tracking and Reconstruction of Multiple Moving Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.09194/) (2018)
- [SGS-SLAM: Semantic Gaussian Splatting For Neural Dense SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03246/) (2024)
- [SNI-SLAM: Semantic Neural Implicit SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11016/) (2023)
- [Nerflets: Local Radiance Fields for Efficient Structure-Aware 3D Scene Representation from 2D Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03361/) (2023)
- [SemGauss-SLAM: Dense Semantic Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07494/) (2024)
- [Spiking PointNet: Spiking Neural Networks for Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.06232/) (2023)
- [Neural Implicit Dense Semantic SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14560/) (2023)
- [DNS SLAM: Dense Neural Semantic-Informed SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00204/) (2023)
- [Hier-SLAM: Scaling-up Semantics in SLAM with a Hierarchically Categorical Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.12518/) (2024)
- [Online Photometric Calibration for Auto Exposure Video for Realtime Visual Odometry and SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.02081/) (2017)
- [GeoSegNet: Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation via Geometric Encoder-Decoder Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06766/) (2022)
- [ZigzagPointMamba: Spatial-Semantic Mamba for Point Cloud Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.21381/) (2025)
- [NeRF and Gaussian Splatting SLAM in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.03263/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Extreme exposure degrades both the 3D map reconstruction and semantic segmentation accuracy, which is particularly detrimental to tightly-coupled systems. To achieve illumination invariance, we propose a novel semantic SLAM framework with two designs. First, the Intrinsic Appearance Normalization (IAN) module proactively disentangles the scene's intrinsic properties, such as albedo, from transient lighting. By learning a standardized, illumination-invariant appearance model, it assigns a stable and consistent color representation to each Gaussian primitive. Second, the Dynamic Radiance Balancing Loss (DRB-Loss) reactively handles frames with extreme exposure. It activates only when an image's exposure is poor, operating directly on the radiance field to guide targeted optimization. This prevents error accumulation from extreme lighting without compromising performance under normal conditions. The synergy between IAN's proactive invariance and DRB-Loss's reactive correction endows our system with unprecedented robustness. Evaluations on public datasets demonstrate state-of-the-art performance in camera tracking, map quality, and semantic and geometric accuracy.