Visual SLAM

SLAM: Simultaneous Localization and Mapping

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Overview

Visual SLAM estimates a camera’s motion while constructing a map of its surroundings, allowing robots and other systems to navigate without relying entirely on external positioning. Classical systems match image features and refine poses and maps with geometric optimization and loop closure; newer approaches learn visual correspondences or use dense scene representations such as neural fields and 3D Gaussian Splatting. Current work also tackles moving objects, changing illumination, uncertain depth and scale, and specialized settings such as underwater, panoramic, and large-scale outdoor scenes. A central tension is achieving accurate, globally consistent maps in difficult environments while keeping computation and memory low enough for real-time use, with benchmark results not always reflecting deployment performance.

Latest papers

CardsList

108 papers11 papers in the last four weeks, down 31% on the four weeks before. 0.1% of all new papers.

  1. HoloRecon: Incremental Reconstruction of Long-Range Panoramas with Global Consistency

    Oct 27, 2026Zhuoxiao Li, Xinyi Liu, Hongye Hou +8Panoramic 3D Reconstruction3D Reconstruction

    The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (GuangZhou) · University of Liverpool · Hong Kong Polytechnic University +1

  2. SG^2SLAM: Spatial Geometry-Informed 3D Gaussian Splatting SLAM for Monocular Outdoor Navigation

    Oct 26, 2026Ziang Guo, Didar Seyidov, Yixiao Zhou +53DGS SLAMVisual SLAM

    Intelligent Space Robotics Laboratory, Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, Moscow, Russia. · Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, China. · SuZhou Automotive Research Institute, Tsinghua University, China. +2

  3. VPR-Space: A Benchmark for Visual Place Recognition in Space Analog Domains

    Oct 26, 2026Richard Fechner, Peer NeubertVisual Place RecognitionSpace Robotics

    Institute for Computational Visualistics, University of Koblenz

  4. Bracketing Shows the Way: Adaptive Multi-Exposure Policy as Input for Robust Visual SLAM

    Oct 23, 2026Olivier Gamache, Anthony Lavertu, David-Alexandre Duclos +3Visual SLAM

    Northern Robotics Laboratory, Université Laval, Québec City, Québec, Canada

  5. Evaluation of Front-End Feature Matching for Lunar Visual SLAM

    Oct 22, 2026Guillem Casadesus Vila, Grace GaoPlanetary Rover RoboticsLocal Feature Matching

    Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States

  6. CAOS-SLAM: Class-Agnostic Object-Aware Real-Time vSLAM for Dynamic Environments

    Oct 19, 2026Gaia Borghi, João Carlos Virgolino Soares, Angelo Bratta +2Visual SLAM

    Dynamic Legged Systems Lab (DLS), Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy · Section of Automation & Control, Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, Denmark

  7. FLoTS-SLAM: Optical Flow-Derived Uncertainty for Monocular Dynamic SLAM with Two-Stage Optimization

    Oct 16, 2026Haorui Du, Lipu ZhouDynamic SLAMVisual SLAM

    The authors are with the School of Instrument Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, Beihang University, Beijing 100191, China

  8. KFS4^4LAM: Adaptive KeyFrame Selection with Structure-Aware Mapping for Endoscopic Gaussian Splatting SLAM

    Oct 15, 2026Xinwei Ju, Zhehua Mao, Tianyi Song +33D Mapping3DGS SLAM

    Hawkes Institute, University College London, London, W1W 7TY, UK

  9. All-St3R SLAM: Real-time RGB Dynamic SLAM with Pixel-wise Motion Masking

    Oct 12, 2026Yewon Kim, Paul Hongsuck Seo, Sang Chul AhnDynamic SLAMMotion Segmentation

    Center for Artificial Intelligence Research, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul, Korea (South) · Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Korea (South) · Center for Artificial Intelligence Research, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, and with AI-Robotics, KIST School (UST), Seoul, Korea (South)

  10. Human-in-the-Loop Neuro-Symbolic Drift Anticipation for Reliable Visual SLAM

    Oct 5, 2026Junhyun Nam, Wonse JoSimultaneous Localization and MappingHuman-in-the-Loop AI

    Department of Information and Telecommunication Engineering, Incheon National University, Incheon, South Korea 22012.

  11. Does Dynamic-Point Filtering Help When Texture Is Scarce? A Controlled Study of ORB-SLAM2 Front-Ends in Synthetic Indoor Scenes

    Oct 2, 2026Zekui XueVisual SLAM

    Department of Computer Science University of Bath Bath, United Kingdom

  12. MVP-SLAM: Multi-Camera Visual-Inertial Floorplan-Prior SLAM

    Sep 30, 2026Asier Bikandi-Noya, Miguel Fernandez-Cortizas, Muhammad Shaheer +2Floor-Plan-Based Visual LocalizationVisual SLAM

    Authors are with the Automation and Robotics Research Group, Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability, and Trust (SnT), University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg. · Holger Voos is also associated with the Faculty of Science, Technology, and Medicine, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg.

  13. Pow3R-SLAM: Real-Time RGB-D SLAM with 3D Reconstruction Priors

    Sep 29, 2026Christopher Kolios, Ishaan Mehta, Sasa Janjic +2Simultaneous Localization and Mapping3D Reconstruction

    Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, Canada. · University of Windsor, Windsor, Canada. · University College London, London, United Kingdom.

  14. MonoEgo: Monocular Metric Egocentric Demonstration Capture with Passive Wrist Constellations and Sparse Workstation Anchors

    Sep 28, 2026Jie Xu, Kangjin Yu, Ziyi Jin +2Simultaneous Localization and MappingVisual Object Tracking

    Anyverse Dynamics

  15. Know-Your-Scene (KYS)-SLAM: Hierarchical Semantic-Motion Priors for Feature Matching in Stereo Visual SLAM

    Sep 23, 2026Preeti Chatterjee, Jin Lu, Jin Sun +1Dynamic SLAMVisual SLAM

    School of Computing, University of Georgia Athens, GA 30602, USA

  16. Dual Covariance Gaussian Splatting SLAM: Decoupling Rendering and Registration for Robust Real-Time Tracking

    Sep 22, 2026Edward Beng Wai Tan, Siew-Kei Lam3D Gaussian Splatting3DGS SLAM

    College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

  17. PanOVOcc: Panoramic Embodied Open-Vocabulary Occupancy Mapping with Long-term Spatial Voxel Memory

    Sep 21, 2026Di Kuang, Mengfei Duan, Yuhang Wang +2Semantic Occupancy MappingOpen-Vocabulary 3D Segmentation

    School of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hunan University, China · National Engineering Research Center of Robot Visual Perception and Control Technology, Hunan University, China

  18. Kinematic Interface for the Wild: Modular Bimanual Loco-Manipulation Capture from 360∘^{\circ} Cameras Alone

    Sep 19, 2026Benjamin Yang, Weiying Wang, Shenggao Li +5Robotic Data CollectionCamera Pose Estimation

    Autel US

  19. Cube-Splat: High-Fidelity 360° Gaussian Splatting SLAM via Cubemap Factorization and Adjoint-Consistent Optimization

    Sep 18, 2026Xiangfei Guo, Hao Shi, Yufan Zhang +43DGS SLAMVisual SLAM

    Zhejiang University · Ant Group

  20. Noctif3R: Feed-Forward Monocular Real-Time SLAM for Photon-Limited Scenes on Embedded Hardware

    Sep 17, 2026Mihir Chauhan, Aditya Uday Abhang, Kevin Biju Mathew +1Simultaneous Localization and MappingVisual SLAM

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

  21. RawSLAM: Online HDR Gaussian SLAM from Linear Radiance

    Sep 17, 2026Marina Orozco González, Luis Merino3D Gaussian Splatting3DGS SLAM

  22. LapaTrack-3D: 6 DoF pre-operative shape tracking for laparoscopic surgery

    Sep 17, 2026Jingwei Song, Javid Hussain Jakir, Ray Zhang +4Medical Image RegistrationVisual SLAM

    United Imaging Research Institute of Intelligent Imaging, Beijing 100144, China · United Imaging, China · University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA

  23. VGGT-GS SLAM: Uncalibrated Monocular Gaussian Splatting SLAM with Feed-Forward Priors

    Sep 17, 2026Yuhang Han, Hao Wang, Jiaxi Cao +13D Gaussian Splatting3DGS SLAM

    National University of Singapore, Singapore

  24. AMB3R-SLAM: Kilometer-scale SLAM with Hierarchical Backend

    Sep 17, 2026Hengyi Wang, Lourdes AgapitoVisual SLAM

    Department of Computer Science, University College London

  25. PanoGS-SLAM: Panoramic 3D Gaussian Splatting SLAM

    Sep 15, 2026Yongqi Mao, Hao Shi, Yufan Zhang +3Simultaneous Localization and Mapping3D Gaussian Splatting

    Zhejiang University · Ant Group · National University of Defense Technology

  26. HuMemSLAM: Efficient Human-Inspired Semantic Place Recognition for Robust Visual SLAM

    Sep 15, 2026Mayowa Adebambo, Sebastian Donnelly, Armand Amaritei +2Visual Place RecognitionVisual SLAM

    School of Engineering, Computing & Mathematics, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK. · Autonomous Driving and Intelligent Transport Group, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.

  27. Visual-SLAM for the detection of hidden tomatoes in greenhouses by Hierarchical Localization and GLOMAP for robotized harvesting

    Sep 10, 2026Fernando Cañadas-Aránega, José C. Moreno, José L. Blanco-Claraco +1Monocular 3D ReconstructionVisual SLAM

    Department of Informatics, CIESOL, ceiA3, Universidad de Almería, Ctra. Sacramento s/n, Almería, 04120, Spain · Department of Engineering, CIESOL, ceiA3, Universidad de Almería, Ctra. Sacramento s/n, Almería, 04120, Spain

  28. Functional-SLAM: Interaction-Aware Mapping with Online Functional Scene Graphs

    Sep 7, 2026Xinggang Hu, Chenyangguang Zhang, Zihan Zhu +3Simultaneous Localization and MappingVisual SLAM

    1Tsinghua University · 2Dalian University of Technology · 3ETH Zurich

  29. Dyn-3D: Unveiling and Resolving Ego-Motion Ambiguity in Vision-Language Models

    Sep 1, 2026Jiayu Ding, Zhuodong Liu, Lei Zhang +63D Spatial ReasoningVisual Odometry

    InkMind Team

  30. Failure or Drift? Evaluating Monocular SLAM under Synthetic and Real-World Corruptions

    Aug 31, 2026Abhay Skaria Thomas, Shashank Agnihotri, Margret KeuperSimultaneous Localization and MappingImage Corruption Robustness

    Machine Learning Group, University of Mannheim, Germany · Max-Planck-Institute for Informatics, Saarland Informatics Campus, Germany