Point Cloud Understanding

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Overview

Point cloud understanding studies how to interpret unordered 3D measurements for tasks such as object classification, scene segmentation, shape analysis, registration, and motion recognition. Methods range from local geometric descriptors and graph or point-transformer networks to voxel and bird’s-eye-view models, with newer work using self-supervised learning, multimodal language models, and parameter-efficient adaptation. Benchmarks such as ScanNet, S3DIS, SemanticKITTI, ShapeNetPart, and ScanObjectNN test performance across indoor, outdoor, and object-level settings. A central challenge is building models that preserve fine geometric detail while generalizing across sensors and domains, especially when labels are scarce or point sampling is uneven.

Latest papers

CardsList

45 papers5 papers in the last four weeks, up 67% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. MixPT: Point Transformer with Interleaved Window and Global Attention

    Oct 22, 2026Minkyun Seo, Hyungtae Lim, Jaesik ParkPoint TransformerPoint Cloud Understanding

    Seoul National University · Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  2. Boundary Detection for High-Dimensional Point Clouds

    Oct 16, 2026Abigail Hickok, Valerio Galanti, Osama Al Dalahmah +1Point Cloud Understanding

    Department of Mathematics Columbia University New York, NY, USA · Department of Computer Science Columbia University New York, NY, USA · Department of Pathology and Cell Biology Columbia University New York, NY, USA +1

  3. Beyond the Snowflakes: Disentangling Weather Effects from Confounding Meta-Factors in LiDAR Object Detection

    Oct 9, 2026Yiming Yang, Jeremy P. BosLidar-Based 3D Object DetectionAutonomous Driving Perception

  4. IndoorBEV: A Lightweight Real-Time LiDAR BEV Perception System for Indoor Mobile Robots

    Sep 30, 2026Haichuan LiRobotic PerceptionBird's-Eye-View Representation

    University of Turku

  5. Superquadric Primitive Decomposition of 3D point clouds via Geometric-Aware Inlier Refinement

    Sep 28, 2026Alessandro Rinaldi, Edoardo Tedesco, Andrea Ferraris +5Point Cloud UnderstandingRobust Estimation

    Department of Informatics, System and Communication, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy · Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy · Department of Computer Science, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany +1

  6. Toward a foundation model for forest point clouds

    Sep 21, 2026Yuanwen Yue, Stefano Puliti, Damien Robert +73D Foundation ModelsPoint Cloud Classification

    ETH Zurich · University of Oxford · Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO) +1

  7. GAPrompt++: Multi-Granular Geometry-Aware Point Cloud Prompt for 3D Vision Model

    Sep 17, 2026Zixiang Ai, Zhenyu Cui, Yufei Guo +4Point Cloud LearningVision Foundation Model Adaptation

    Wangxuan Institute of Computer Technology, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China · Intelligent Science and Technology Academy of CASIC, Beijing 100041, China · Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China +1

  8. Geometry Without Coordinates: LiDAR Diffusion as a 3D Feature Bridge

    Sep 9, 2026Samed Doğan, Nico Leuze, Alfred Schöttl3D Semantic SegmentationTransfer Learning

    Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology Munich University of Applied Sciences Munich, Bavaria 80335

  9. Calibration and Comparative Analysis of Forward-Looking Sonar and 3D Sonar for Enhanced Underwater Object Recognition

    Aug 29, 2026Aditya Penumarti, Khanh Dong, Zi-Hao Zhang +6Underwater ImagingUnderwater Object Detection

    College of Engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, USA · Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering at the Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, South Korea · Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, USA +1

  10. LoDA: A Level of Detection Aware Method and a Multimodal Sensing Benchmark for Object Level Change Detection

    Aug 5, 2026Haitian Wang, Xinyu Wang, Sheldon Fung +2Autonomous Driving PerceptionRemote Sensing Change Detection

    Western Australia Machine Intelligence Group Pty Ltd Nedlands, WA, Australia · Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering The University of Western Australia Crawley, WA, Australia

  11. Multimodal Plant Root Phenotyping with Integration of 3D Skeleton Extraction and Language Analysis

    Aug 4, 2026Jiakai Lin, Zijun Li, Guoyu LuPlant PhenotypingPoint Cloud Understanding

    Intelligent Vision and Sensing (IVS) Lab at Indiana University Bloomington

  12. PointCHR: Point Cloud Analysis via Curvature-Aware Hyperbolic Rectification

    Jul 27, 2026Xinxing Yu, Liying Yang, Hao Mo +4Geometric Representation LearningPoint Cloud Understanding

    School of Computer Science and Engineering, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau, China · School of Computing and Information Technology, Great Bay University, Dongguan, China · Shenzhen International Graduate School, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen, China +1

  13. Point Ladder Tuning: Parameter-Efficient Hierarchical Adaptation for 3D Point Cloud Understanding

    Jul 21, 2026Junlin Chang, Longhao Zou, Rui Li3D Point Cloud SegmentationPoint Cloud Classification

    Beihang University, Beijing · Pengcheng Laboratory, Shenzhen

  14. ACZ-GSeg: Adaptive Concentric Zone-based Two-stage Ground Segmentation for LiDAR Point Clouds

    Jul 13, 2026Ge Zhang Chunyang Wang Bin Liu3D Point Cloud SegmentationPoint Cloud Understanding

    School of Optoelectronic Engineering, Xi'an University of Technology, Shaanxi, Xi'an, 710000

  15. From Geometric Labels to Semantic Understanding of Indoor Building Components Using Multimodal Large Language Models

    Jul 4, 2026Shuju Jing, Chao YinPoint Cloud Understanding3D VLMs

    School of Qilu Transportation, Shandong University, Jinan, 250002, China · Guangzhou Institute of Geography, Guangdong Academy of Sciences, 100 Xianlie Middle Road, Guangzhou, 510070, Guangdong, China

  16. Tri-Efficient Transfer Learning for Point Cloud Videos

    Jun 23, 2026Yiding Sun, Dongxu Zhang, Jihua Zhu +6Point Cloud UnderstandingSelf-Supervised Visual Representation Learning

    School of Software Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University · School of Information and Communication Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University · SIGS, Tsinghua University

  17. PCFootprint: A Large-Scale Dataset and Benchmark for Vectorized Building Footprint Extraction from Aerial LiDAR Point Clouds

    Jun 18, 2026Haoyuan Shen, Kuihao Wang, Ruisheng Wang +1Remote Sensing Image SegmentationBuilding Footprint Extraction

    School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 518060, China

  18. C-ARC: Continuous-Adaptive Range Clustering for Non-Repetitive LiDAR Sensors

    Jun 17, 2026Nick B. Schroeder, Jonathan Lichtenfeld, Oskar von StrykClusteringPoint Cloud Understanding

    Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany · Technical University of Darmstadt, Hochschulstr. 10, 64289 Darmstadt, Germany. · Simulation, Systems Optimization and Robotics Group, Technical University of Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany +1

  19. GRAR: Glass-induced Reflection Artifact Removal in LiDAR Point Clouds

    Jun 9, 2026Wanpeng Shao, Zeyi Guo, Bo Zhang +3Remote SensingPoint Cloud Understanding

    College of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, Hunan University, Changsha, 410012, China · School of Finance and Statistics, Hunan University, 109 Shijiachong Road, Financial & Economic Campus, Yuelu District, Changsha, 410079, Hunan, China, Changsha, 410012, China · School of Design, Hunan University, Pailou Road, South Campus, Taozihu, Changsha, 410082, Hunan, China

  20. RadiusFPS: Efficient Farthest Point Sampling on CPUs and GPUs via Spherical Voxel Pruning

    Jun 4, 2026Ziyang Yu, Xiang Li, Qiong Chang +1GPU AccelerationPoint Cloud Learning

    School of Computing Institute of Science Tokyo Tokyo

  21. Hub-Aware Hybrid Search: Accelerating the Locally Aligned Ant Technique

    Jun 4, 2026Simone Vilardi, Reynier Peletier, Felipe Contreras +1Metaheuristic OptimizationPoint Cloud Understanding

    University of Groningen - Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence · University of Groningen - Kapteyn Astronomical Institute · Instituto de F´ısica y Astronom´ıa, Universidad de Valpara´ıso

  22. SRENet: Spectral Re-Entry Network for Point Cloud Action Recognition

    Jun 2, 2026Qiuxia Wu, Jiarui Lan, Wenxiong Kang +2Frequency-Domain Feature LearningPoint Cloud Learning

    School of Software Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 511400, China · School of Automation Science and Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 511400, China · School of Computer Science, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia +1

  23. Paving the Way for Point Cloud Video Representation Learning Using A PDE Model

    Jun 1, 2026Zhuoxu Huang, Zhenkun Fan, Jungong Han +1Point Cloud LearningVideo Representation Learning

    Department of Computer Science, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth SY23 3DB, U.K. · Department of Automation, Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China · Department of Electrical Engineering, Surrey University, Surrey GU2 7XH, U.K.

  24. PointQ-Bench: Benchmarking Diagnostic and Interpretable Point Cloud Quality Assessment

    May 27, 2026Duanchu Wang, Cheng Li, Junjie Yang +5VLM EvaluationPoint Cloud Understanding

    Xidian University · Xi’an Jiaotong University · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences +1

  25. PointLLM-R: Enhancing 3D Point Cloud Reasoning via Chain-of-Thought

    May 21, 2026Chaoqi Chen, Qile Xu, Wenjun Zhou +1CoT ReasoningPoint Cloud Understanding

    Visual Computing Research Center (VCC), College of Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE), Shenzhen University, China · VCC, CSSE, Shenzhen University, China

  26. Towards Integrated Rock Support Visualisation in 3D Point Cloud of Underground Mines

    May 20, 2026Dibyayan Patra, Simit Raval, Pasindu Ranasinghe +2Point Cloud Understanding

    School of Minerals and Energy Resources Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia. · School of Surveying and Built Environment, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia.

  27. Learning Point Cloud Geometry as a Statistical Manifold: Theory and Practice

    May 11, 2026Jinwoo Lee, Jiwoo Kim, Woojae Shin +2Geometric Representation LearningManifold Learning

    Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Republic of Korea · Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), Daegu, Republic of Korea

  28. Diffusion Masked Pretraining for Dynamic Point Cloud

    May 5, 2026Zhuoyue Zhang, Yiding Sun, Haozhe Cheng +4Self-Supervised Pre-TrainingPoint Cloud Learning

    School of Software Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China · School of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hunan University, Changsha, China · Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

  29. Channel-Level Relation to Attentive Aggregation with Neighborhood-Homogeneity Constraint for Point Cloud Analysis

    May 4, 2026Jiaqi Shi, Jin Xiao, Xiaoguang Hu +53D Point Cloud SegmentationPoint Cloud Classification

    School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing, China · Wuhan Leaddo Measuring & Control Technology, Wuhan, China · School of Artificial Intelligence, Beihang University, Beijing, China

  30. From Spherical to Gaussian: A Comparative Analysis of Point Cloud Cropping Strategies in Large-Scale 3D Environments

    May 3, 2026Maximilian Kellner, Dominik Merkle, Michael Brunklaus +13D Semantic SegmentationPoint Cloud Understanding

    Fraunhofer Institute for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM, Freiburg, 79110, Germany · University of Freiburg, Department of Sustainable Systems Engineering INATECH, Freiburg, 79110, Germany