# Rotational Symmetry based Object Pose Estimation from Point Clouds in the Absence of Known 3D Models

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.16593 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.16593/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Jun 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [PoseCNN: A Convolutional Neural Network for 6D Object Pose Estimation in Cluttered Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.00199/) (2017)
- [Normalized Object Coordinate Space for Category-Level 6D Object Pose and Size Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.02970/) (2019)
- [Past, Present, and Future of Simultaneous Localization And Mapping: Towards the Robust-Perception Age](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.05830/) (2016)
- [DenseFusion: 6D Object Pose Estimation by Iterative Dense Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.04780/) (2019)
- [BB8: A Scalable, Accurate, Robust to Partial Occlusion Method for Predicting the 3D Poses of Challenging Objects without Using Depth](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.10896/) (2017)
- [PVN3D: A Deep Point-wise 3D Keypoints Voting Network for 6DoF Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.04231/) (2019)
- [OnePose: One-Shot Object Pose Estimation without CAD Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.12257/) (2022)
- [Objectron: A Large Scale Dataset of Object-Centric Videos in the Wild with Pose Annotations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09988/) (2020)
- [Gen6D: Generalizable Model-Free 6-DoF Object Pose Estimation from RGB Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.10776/) (2022)
- [On Object Symmetries and 6D Pose Estimation from Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07640/) (2019)
- [6D Object Pose Regression via Supervised Learning on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.08942/) (2020)
- [Going Further with Point Pair Features](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.04061/) (2017)
- [ES6D: A Computation Efficient and Symmetry-Aware 6D Pose Regression Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01080/) (2022)
- [SyMFM6D: Symmetry-aware Multi-directional Fusion for Multi-View 6D Object Pose Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.00306/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Object pose estimation is crucial to many industrial applications, with one example being automated spray painting using a robot. However, confidentiality concerns often limit access to high-quality 3D models, posing a significant challenge for point-cloud-based pose estimation. In such scenarios, rotational symmetry, a readily accessible characteristic of many industrial objects, can provide valuable prior information to facilitate pose estimation.In this paper, we propose a method that leverages the rotational symmetry commonly found in industrial objects to address the challenge caused by the absence of 3D models. The object pose is jointly estimated with point cloud refinement through an iterative optimization process. This optimization relies on a rotational symmetry constraint loss. To construct this loss, each 3D point is rotated according to the currently estimated pose, and multiple correspondences are identified using nearest-neighbor search by exploiting the rotational symmetry property. These correspondences are then used to compute the rotational symmetry constraint loss, which iteratively refines both the pose and the point cloud.By explicitly incorporating rotational symmetry into the optimization process, the proposed method achieves robust pose estimation and generalizes well across diverse object types. The proposed method is evaluated on a dataset specifically created for point clouds without known 3D models, consisting of four categories of synthetic objects and one real wheel hub collected from a production line. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves performance comparable to methods that rely on known 3D models.