Signed Distance Functions

Also known as SDF

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Overview

A signed distance function assigns each point its distance to the nearest surface, with the sign indicating which side of the surface it lies on; the zero level set represents the surface itself. Researchers learn these fields from images, depth maps, and point clouds using neural implicit networks, spatial grids, and hybrid encodings, often adding geometric priors or uncertainty estimates. In robotics, distance values and gradients support collision checking, motion planning, and safety control, while in vision they support surface reconstruction and shape analysis. A central challenge is preserving accurate distances, signs, and thin or open geometry while keeping representations efficient and reliable with incomplete data, especially near medial axes and boundaries.

Latest papers

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38 papers3 papers in the last four weeks, down 25% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Low-Latency Mapless ESDF Queries for MAV Reactive Collision Avoidance

    Oct 9, 2026Leonard Freißmuth, Cedric Le Gentil, Helen Oleynikova +1Collision AvoidanceRobot Collision Avoidance

    Mobile Robotics Lab, ETH Zurich

  2. Volume Rendering with Metric--Phase Fields for Thin Structures and Sign-Ambiguous Geometry

    Oct 9, 2026Junkai Deng, Jiayi Kong, Xuhui Chen +53D ReconstructionMulti-View 3D Reconstruction

    College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore · Key Laboratory of System Software (Chinese Academy of Sciences), Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences · Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China +1

  3. QuadHand: A Compact Quadrotor Aerial Manipulator with MRC-SDF-Based Whole-Body Motion Planning

    Sep 28, 2026Rui Jin, Ruiyang Liu, Xinhang Xu +4Signed Distance FunctionsWhole-Body Robotic Manipulation

    School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798

  4. Feasibility Distance Fields for Heterogeneous Constraints in Robot Configuration Space

    Sep 21, 2026Xijing Cui, Huayan Pu, Jun Luo +1Constrained Motion PlanningSigned Distance Functions

    First and third authors' affiliation · Second author's affiliation

  5. Stochastic Neural Signed Swept Volume for Real-time Chance-Constrained Trajectory Optimization

    Sep 18, 2026Qingyi Chen, Kevin Zhang, Lucas Chen +1Robot Motion PlanningRobot Collision Avoidance

    Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA

  6. MRI-Guided Reslice-Refined Cross-Slice SDF Reconstruction of the Left Ventricle from Cardiac MRI with Sparse Axial Supervision

    Sep 8, 2026Quanxin Zheng, Shuai ZhaoImplicit Neural RepresentationsSigned Distance Functions

    1China Electronics (Beijing) Information Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd.

  7. SHIFT: Surface-aware High-speed Integration For TSDFs

    Sep 6, 2026Ayaan Choudhury, Lokender Tiwari3D MappingSigned Distance Functions

    Indian Institute of Technology Jodhpur · BotLab Dynamics

  8. NeuDonatello: Uncertainty-Aware Framework for Accurate Neural SDF Learning

    Aug 27, 2026Alvin Jinsung Choi, Wanhee Kim, Taeyun Kim +33D ReconstructionMulti-View 3D Reconstruction

    Department of Computer Science The University of Texas at Austin Texas, USA · School of Electrical Engineering Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) Daejeon, Republic of Korea · Robotics Program Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) Daejeon, Republic of Korea +2

  9. Predicting Signed Distance Functions for Visual Instance Segmentation

    Aug 13, 2026Emil Brissman, Joakim Johnander, Michael FelsbergSigned Distance FunctionsInstance Segmentation

    1Computer Vision Laboratory, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Linköping University · 2Saab, Sweden · 3Zenseact, Sweden

  10. Hölder Signed Distance: A Differentiable, Signed, Parallelizable Metric for Robotics

    Aug 7, 2026Felipe Bartelt, Ali Umut Kaypak, Anthony Tzes +3Signed Distance FunctionsDifferentiable Optimization

  11. Real-time Whole-Body Motion Planning for Mobile Manipulators Carrying Arbitrarily Shaped Payloads via Kinematically-Coupled SVSDF

    Aug 7, 2026Yisheng Li, Longji Yin, Tingrui Zhang +6Signed Distance FunctionsMobile Manipulation

    Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Hong Kong · Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences, Tsinghua University

  12. Control Barrier Functions via Minkowski Operations for Safe Navigation among Polytopes

    Aug 3, 2026Yi-Hsuan Chen, Shuo Liu, Wei Xiao +2Signed Distance FunctionsControl Barrier Functions

    Department of Aerospace Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA · School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, and with M3S, SMART, Singapore +1

  13. Grasp Execution Without a Planner: Configuration-Space Grasp Distance Fields with Certified Safety & Guaranteed Quality

    Aug 1, 2026Clinton Enwerem, John S. Baras, Calin BeltaRobotic ControlRobotic Grasping

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Institute for Systems Research (ISR), University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

  14. From Distances to Trajectories: Real-Time Signed Distance Function Mapping and Distance-Accelerated Motion Planning for UAVs

    Jul 21, 2026Jason Stanley, Zhirui Dai, Qihao Qian +6Trajectory GenerationSigned Distance Functions

    UC San Diego, La Jolla, USA · Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, UC San Diego, 9500 Gilman Dr, La Jolla, 92093, CA, USA. · Shield AI, San Diego, USA +1

  15. Points as Tori: Fast Pointwise Signed Distance for Point Clouds

    Jul 18, 2026Nicole Feng, Ioannis Gkioulekas, Keenan CraneSigned Distance Functions3D Reconstruction

    Carnegie Mellon University, USA · Roblox, USA

  16. CASA-SDF: Curriculum-Aware Spatial Adaptation with Curvature-Guided Density for Neural Implicit Surface Reconstruction

    Jul 15, 2026Lei Yang, Weiqing Li, Zhiyong Su +1Signed Distance Functions3D Reconstruction

    School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, 200 Xiaolingwei, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China210094 · School of Automation, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, 200 Xiaolingwei, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China210094

  17. GPU-Accelerated Polygonal Signed Distance Functions for Real-Time Collision Avoidance

    Jul 5, 2026Taekwon Ga, Jongeun ChoiSigned Distance FunctionsGPU Acceleration

    School of Mechanical Engineering, Yonsei University, Seoul 03722, South Korea

  18. HSDF-Lane: Height-Aligned Signed Distance Field with Semantic Lane Prior for 3D Lane Detection

    Jun 30, 2026Jiyong Boo, Byeongin Joung, Hyemin Yang +1Signed Distance FunctionsAutonomous Driving Perception

    KAIST, Republic of Korea

  19. Embedding Semantic Risk into Distance Fields and CBFs for Online Monocular Safe Control

    Jun 1, 2026Dawei Zhang, Nuo Chen, Shuo Liu +2Signed Distance FunctionsControl Barrier Functions

    Division of Systems Engineering, Boston University, United States · Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, United States · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Boston University, United States

  20. Directed Distance Fields for Constant-Time Ray Queries on Gaussian Splatting

    May 30, 2026Subhankar MIshra3D Gaussian SplattingSigned Distance Functions

    School of Computer Sciences, National Institute of Science Education and Research (NISER), 752050, India

  21. Geometry-Aware Control Barrier Functions for Collision Avoidance via Bernstein Polynomial Approximations

    May 29, 2026Siwon Jo, Yanze Zhang, Yupeng Yang +1Multi-Robot Motion PlanningSigned Distance Functions

    Siwon Jo is with the GRASP Laboratory, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA. · Yanze Zhang and Wenhao Luo are with the Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA. · Yupeng Yang is with the Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA.

  22. S2MDF: A Plug-And-Play Layer for Intersection-Free Multi-Object Signed Distance Fields

    May 28, 2026Deniz Sayin Mercadier, Federico Stella, Aurel Bizeau +2Signed Distance Functions3D Reconstruction

    CVLab, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Lausanne, Switzerland

  23. Metric--Phase Fields: Decoupling Distance and Sign for Thin-Structure Reconstruction from Unoriented Point Clouds

    May 25, 2026Jiayi Kong, Xuhui Chen, Chen Zong +4Signed Distance Functions3D Reconstruction

    S-Lab, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore · Key Laboratory of System Software (CAS), Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China · University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China +3

  24. DySurface: Consistent 4D Surface Reconstruction via Bridging Explicit Gaussians and Implicit Functions

    May 11, 2026Minje Kim, Younghyun Noh, Jaesoon Kim +13D Gaussian SplattingSigned Distance Functions

    KAIST · KT · Sungkyunkwan University

  25. First Shape, Then Meaning: Efficient Geometry and Semantics Learning for Indoor Reconstruction

    May 5, 2026Remi Chierchia, Léo Lebrat, David Ahmedt-Aristizabal +3Signed Distance Functions3D Reconstruction

    School of Electrical Engineering & Robotics, Queensland University of Technology, Australia · Imaging and Computer Vision Group, CSIRO Data61, Australia

  26. Learning Discriminative Signed Distance Functions from Multi-scale Level-of-detail Features for 3D Anomaly Detection

    May 5, 2026Haibo Xiao, Hanzhe Liang, Jie Zhou +2Point Cloud Anomaly DetectionSigned Distance Functions

    College of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Shenzhen University · Biological and Life Sciences Division, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, UAE · Shenzhen Audencia Financial Technology Institute, Shenzhen University, China +1

  27. Novel Algorithms for Smoothly Differentiable and Efficiently Vectorizable Contact Manifold Construction

    Apr 19, 2026Onur Beker, Andreas René Geist, Anselm Paulus +1Signed Distance FunctionsContact-Rich Robotic Manipulation

    University of Tübingen

  28. Medial Axis Aware Learning of Signed Distance Functions

    Apr 15, 2026Samuel Weidemaier, Christoph Norden-Smoch, Martin RumpfSigned Distance FunctionsPoint Cloud Surface Reconstruction

    Institute for Numerical Simulation, University of Bonn

  29. G-EDF-Loc: 3D Continuous Gaussian Distance Field for Robust Gradient-Based 6DoF Localization

    Apr 6, 2026José E. Maese, Lucía Coto-Elena, Luis Merino +1Map-Based LocalizationPoint Cloud Registration

    The authors are with the Service Robotics Laboratory, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain.

  30. Kernel-SDF: An Open-Source Library for Real-Time Signed Distance Function Estimation using Kernel Regression

    Mar 31, 2026Zhirui Dai, Tianxing Fan, Mani Amani +4Signed Distance FunctionsRobotic Perception

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. · Department of Mechanical Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon 34051, Republic of Korea.