# GSMap: 2D Gaussians for Online HD Mapping

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.09619 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09619/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 36 of its 42 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 May 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 36)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Deformable DETR: Deformable Transformers for End-to-End Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04159/) (2020)
- [Planning-oriented Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10156/) (2022)
- [2D Gaussian Splatting for Geometrically Accurate Radiance Fields](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17888/) (2024)
- [Argoverse 2: Next Generation Datasets for Self-Driving Perception and Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00493/) (2023)
- [VectorNet: Encoding HD Maps and Agent Dynamics from Vectorized Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04259/) (2020)
- [End-to-end Autonomous Driving: Challenges and Frontiers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.16927/) (2023)
- [Multi-Modal Fusion Transformer for End-to-End Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.09224/) (2021)
- [BEVFusion: A Simple and Robust LiDAR-Camera Fusion Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13790/) (2022)
- [MapTR: Structured Modeling and Learning for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.14437/) (2022)
- [HDMapNet: An Online HD Map Construction and Evaluation Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06307/) (2021)
- [VectorMapNet: End-to-end Vectorized HD Map Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08920/) (2022)
- [MapTRv2: An End-to-End Framework for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05736/) (2023)
- [LIO-SAM: Tightly-coupled Lidar Inertial Odometry via Smoothing and Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.00258/) (2020)
- [Predicting Semantic Map Representations from Images using Pyramid Occupancy Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13402/) (2020)
- [GaussianFormer: Scene as Gaussians for Vision-Based 3D Semantic Occupancy Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17429/) (2024)
- [StreamMapNet: Streaming Mapping Network for Vectorized Online HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12570/) (2023)
- [BEVSegFormer: Bird's Eye View Semantic Segmentation From Arbitrary Camera Rigs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.04050/) (2022)
- [PivotNet: Vectorized Pivot Learning for End-to-end HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16477/) (2023)
- [Neural Map Prior for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08481/) (2023)
- [Online Map Vectorization for Autonomous Driving: A Rasterization Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.10502/) (2023)
- [MGMap: Mask-Guided Learning for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00876/) (2024)
- [HIMap: HybrId Representation Learning for End-to-end Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.08639/) (2024)
- [SuperFusion: Multilevel LiDAR-Camera Fusion for Long-Range HD Map Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15656/) (2022)
- [PolyDiffuse: Polygonal Shape Reconstruction via Guided Set Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01461/) (2023)
- [Perceive, Interact, Predict: Learning Dynamic and Static Clues for End-to-End Motion Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.02181/) (2022)
- [Path-Aware Graph Attention for HD Maps in Motion Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.13772/) (2022)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Accurate High-Definition (HD) map construction is critical for autonomous driving, yet existing methods face a fundamental trade-off: vectorization-based approaches preserve topology but struggle with geometric fidelity, while rasterization-based approaches enable precise geometric supervision but produce unstructured outputs. To bridge this gap, we propose GSMap, a novel framework that unifies both paradigms via a learnable 2D Gaussian representation. Each map element is modeled as an ordered sequence of 2D Gaussians, whose centers correspond to the vertices of the vectorized polyline/polygon. This formulation enables simultaneous optimization through: (1) Differentiable rasterization that enforces pixel-level geometric constraints, and (2) Topology-aware vectorization that maintains structural regularity. Experiments on both nuScenes and Argoverse2 demonstrate that our Gaussian-based representation effectively unifies geometric and topological learning, achieving significant performance improvements and demonstrating strong compatibility with existing HD mapping architectures. Code will be available at https://github.com/peakpang/GSMap