# Object Pose Distribution Estimation for Determining Revolution and Reflection Uncertainty in Point Clouds

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.07211 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.07211/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 37 of its 47 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Dec 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [Adam: A Method for Stochastic Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1412.6980/) (2014)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Representation Learning with Contrastive Predictive Coding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03748/) (2018)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Dynamic Graph CNN for Learning on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07829/) (2018)
- [Point Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00931/) (2020)
- [KPConv: Flexible and Deformable Convolution for Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08889/) (2019)
- [Open3D: A Modern Library for 3D Data Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.09847/) (2018)
- [BOP: Benchmark for 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.08319/) (2018)
- [BOP Challenge 2020 on 6D Object Localization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.07378/) (2020)
- [EPOS: Estimating 6D Pose of Objects with Symmetries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.00605/) (2020)
- [SurfEmb: Dense and Continuous Correspondence Distributions for Object Pose Estimation with Learnt Surface Embeddings](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13489/) (2021)
- [Recovering 6D Object Pose and Predicting Next-Best-View in the Crowd](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.07506/) (2015)
- [BlenderProc](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.01911/) (2019)
- [BOP Challenge 2022 on Detection, Segmentation and Pose Estimation of Specific Rigid Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13075/) (2023)
- [Implicit-PDF: Non-Parametric Representation of Probability Distributions on the Rotation Manifold](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.05965/) (2021)
- [BOP Challenge 2023 on Detection, Segmentation and Pose Estimation of Seen and Unseen Rigid Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.09799/) (2024)
- [FreeZe: Training-free zero-shot 6D pose estimation with geometric and vision foundation models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00947/) (2023)
- [Deep Directional Statistics: Pose Estimation with Uncertainty Quantification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.03430/) (2018)
- [A Smooth Representation of Belief over SO(3) for Deep Rotation Learning with Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.01031/) (2020)
- [Large-scale 6D Object Pose Estimation Dataset for Industrial Bin-Picking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.12125/) (2019)
- [ROBI: A Multi-View Dataset for Reflective Objects in Robotic Bin-Picking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.04112/) (2021)
- [BOP Challenge 2024 on Model-Based and Model-Free 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02812/) (2025)
- [Confronting Ambiguity in 6D Object Pose Estimation via Score-Based Diffusion on SE(3)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.15873/) (2023)
- [SpyroPose: SE(3) Pyramids for Object Pose Distribution Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05308/) (2023)
- [Symmetry Aware Evaluation of 3D Object Detection and Pose Estimation in Scenes of Many Parts in Bulk](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.08129/) (2018)
- [A New Approach to 3D ICP Covariance Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.05722/) (2019)
- [Ki-Pode: Keypoint-based Implicit Pose Distribution Estimation of Rigid Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.09659/) (2022)
- [KeyMatchNet: Zero-Shot Pose Estimation in 3D Point Clouds by Generalized Keypoint Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.16102/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Towards a Modular Bin-picking Framework for Handling Object Pose Uncertainties](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.13698/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Object pose estimation is crucial to robotic perception and typically provides a single-pose estimate. However, a single estimate cannot capture pose uncertainty deriving from visual ambiguity, which can lead to unreliable behavior. Existing pose distribution methods rely heavily on color information, often unavailable in industrial settings. We propose a novel neural network-based method for estimating object pose uncertainty using only 3D colorless data. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first approach that leverages deep learning for pose distribution estimation without relying on RGB input. We validate our method in a real-world bin picking scenario with objects of varying geometric ambiguity. Our current implementation focuses on symmetries in reflection and revolution, but the framework is extendable to full SE(3) pose distribution estimation. Source code available at opde3d.github.io