# FeatureSLAM: Feature-enriched 3D gaussian splatting SLAM in real time

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.05738 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.05738/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 41 of its 61 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Segment Anything](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.02643/) (2023)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [Grounding DINO: Marrying DINO with Grounded Pre-Training for Open-Set Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05499/) (2023)
- [Grounded SAM: Assembling Open-World Models for Diverse Visual Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.14159/) (2024)
- [The Replica Dataset: A Digital Replica of Indoor Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.05797/) (2019)
- [ORB-SLAM3: An Accurate Open-Source Library for Visual, Visual-Inertial and Multi-Map SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11898/) (2020)
- [Language-driven Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.03546/) (2022)
- [NICE-SLAM: Neural Implicit Scalable Encoding for SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.12130/) (2021)
- [LERF: Language Embedded Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.09553/) (2023)
- [iMAP: Implicit Mapping and Positioning in Real-Time](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.12352/) (2021)
- [Gaussian Splatting SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06741/) (2023)
- [LangSplat: 3D Language Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.16084/) (2023)
- [Gaussian Grouping: Segment and Edit Anything in 3D Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.00732/) (2023)
- [SplaTAM: Splat, Track & Map 3D Gaussians for Dense RGB-D SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02126/) (2023)
- [Feature 3DGS: Supercharging 3D Gaussian Splatting to Enable Distilled Feature Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.03203/) (2023)
- [GS-SLAM: Dense Visual SLAM with 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11700/) (2023)
- [Taming 3DGS: High-Quality Radiance Fields with Limited Resources](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.15643/) (2024)
- [Tracking Anything with Decoupled Video Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.03903/) (2023)
- [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)
- [Photo-SLAM: Real-time Simultaneous Localization and Photorealistic Mapping for Monocular, Stereo, and RGB-D Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.16728/) (2023)
- [KISS-ICP: In Defense of Point-to-Point ICP -- Simple, Accurate, and Robust Registration If Done the Right Way](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.15397/) (2022)
- [RaDe-GS: Rasterizing Depth in Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.01467/) (2024)
- [SuMa++: Efficient LiDAR-based Semantic SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.11320/) (2021)
- [SGS-SLAM: Semantic Gaussian Splatting For Neural Dense SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03246/) (2024)
- [Orbeez-SLAM: A Real-time Monocular Visual SLAM with ORB Features and NeRF-realized Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13274/) (2022)
- [vMAP: Vectorised Object Mapping for Neural Field SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.01838/) (2023)
- [SNI-SLAM: Semantic Neural Implicit SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11016/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Towards Next-Generation SLAM: A Survey on 3DGS-SLAM Focusing on Performance, Robustness, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.04251/) (2026)
- [LatentAM: Real-Time, Large-Scale Latent Gaussian Attention Mapping via Online Dictionary Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.12314/) (2026)
- [SpectralSplats: Robust Differentiable Tracking via Spectral Moment Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.24036/) (2026)
- [TIDES: Time-Derivative Event Simulation via Deformable Reconstruction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.02058/) (2026)
- [Dual Covariance Gaussian Splatting SLAM: Decoupling Rendering and Registration for Robust Real-Time Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.25746/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We present a real-time tracking SLAM system that unifies efficient camera tracking with photorealistic feature-enriched mapping using 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS). Our main contribution is integrating dense feature rasterization into the novel-view synthesis, aligned with a visual foundation model. This yields strong semantics, going beyond basic RGB-D input, aiding both tracking and mapping accuracy. Unlike previous semantic SLAM approaches (which embed pre-defined class labels) FeatureSLAM enables entirely new downstream tasks via free-viewpoint, open-set segmentation. Across standard benchmarks, our method achieves real-time tracking, on par with state-of-the-art systems while improving tracking stability and map fidelity without prohibitive compute. Quantitatively, we obtain 9% lower pose error and 8% higher mapping accuracy compared to recent fixed-set SLAM baselines. Our results confirm that real-time feature-embedded SLAM, is not only valuable for enabling new downstream applications. It also improves the performance of the underlying tracking and mapping subsystems, providing semantic and language masking results that are on-par with offline 3DGS models, alongside state-of-the-art tracking, depth and RGB rendering.