Papers for

augmented reality engineers

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Voxel selective splatting improves 3d object reconstruction from few images

VS-Splat: Voxel-Selective feed-forward Gaussian Splatting for end-to-end 3D object reconstruction from sparse-views

Abstract: Feed-forward Gaussian splatting models have demonstrated remarkable effectiveness in reconstructing three-dimensional (3D) objects from a few two-dimensional (2D) images, even if they are unseen. As existing methods typically predict Gaussian primitives uniformly across the 3D space, most primitives are placed in non-object regions. This may hinder the representation of fine object details. This paper proposes a Voxel-Selective Gaussian Splatting model (VS-Splat), a new end-to-endfeed-forward Gaussian splatting framework that predicts many primitives only within selected voxels that are likely to belong to an object, without 3D structural supervision. To achieve this, we propose a new learnable voxel selection approach that identifies object-centric voxels only with 2D rendering supervision. Our sparse-view rendering experiments with three benchmark datasets show that proposed VS-Splat outperforms several state-of-the-art methods. We further demonstrate its effectiveness as a backbone for an existing densification method and show that anoptional extension improves its robustness to inaccurate camera pose estimates.

Fri 11 SeptComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The gist
Reconstructing 3D objects from just a few photos is hard because many 3D models waste effort representing empty space instead of the object. The authors came up with a new method called VS-Splat that focuses on likely parts of the 3D space where the object is, using only 2D images to guide the process. This approach places fewer points outside the object and captures finer details better. Their tests show VS-Splat works better than previous methods, and it can also improve other 3D reconstruction techniques and handle camera errors better.
Open 2609.12343v1

Person centered detection improves two hand and object interaction parsing

Single-Query Person-Centric Bimanual Hand-Object Interaction Detection

Abstract: Understanding person-level bi-manual interactions requires not only detecting hands, but also identifying which two hands belong to the same person and what each hand interacts with. Existing hand--object interaction methods are mostly hand-centric: they treat each hand as an independent instance, which can lead to ambiguous ownership in multi-person scenes. We propose a person-centric formulation in which a single query predicts a structured output for one person, including the human box, body pose, hand boxes and states, and interaction targets. We introduce part-aware deformable attention to allocate attention across human, hand, and pose-specific reference regions, enabling one query to capture the full person structure. We further unify detection and interaction reasoning with a hand-to-query relationship matrix, where each hand selects its interaction target from the detected query set plus a learnable off token, directly recovering the target's box and class without separate object regression. We build a COCO-based dataset with person-centric bi-manual interaction annotations and define structured metrics for evaluating hand states and complete hand--object tuples. Experiments with a transformer-based detector show that our formulation improves person-level bi-manual interaction parsing and provides an effective unified framework for joint detection, pose estimation, and hand reasoning.

Thu 10 SeptComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The gist
Understanding how people use both their hands to interact with objects is hard because it's tricky to know which hand belongs to which person and what each hand is doing. The authors created a new approach that looks at the whole person at once, including their body, hands, and what they might be holding or touching. Their method uses a special attention system to focus on important body parts and figures out hand interactions in one step. They also made a new dataset to test this and showed their method works better for recognizing these two-handed interactions.
Open 2609.12155v1

Model improves 3d object separation from sparse multiple images

SAMV-DUSt3R: Instance-Centric 3D Scene Decoupling from Sparse Multi-Views

Abstract: With the rising demand to decouple objects from 3D scenes, we propose SAMV-DUSt3R, an end-to-end model that injects SAM2 2D masks into MV-DUSt3R reconstruction. A Cross Flow Mask Block uses these masks to steer the network toward the target instance, jointly improving shape accuracy and achieving object-level disentanglement without multi-stage pipelines. To ensure reconstruction stability, a lightweight Spatial RankGNN selects the optimal reference view with a selection accuracy of 73.5\%. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our method boosts average reconstruction precision by 11\% across various metrics compared to state-of-the-art baselines. These results reveal a strong instance-disentanglement capability and clear benefits for driving, robotics, AR/VR, and heritage digitisation.

Thu 10 SeptComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The gist
Separating objects from 3D scenes is challenging, especially when working with a few pictures taken from different angles. This paper presents a new method that uses object masks from a 2D segmentation model to guide 3D reconstruction, helping to focus on one object at a time. Their approach improves the accuracy of 3D shapes and makes it easier to distinguish individual objects in a scene. They also developed a lightweight network to pick the best viewpoint for reconstruction, leading to more stable and reliable results.
Open 2609.11279v1

Improved 3D scene recovery from hazy images with new Gaussian splatting method

Tri-DehazeGS: Scene--Medium Decoupled Gaussian Splatting with Transmittance-Aware Optimization

Abstract: Recovering clean 3D scenes from hazy multi-view images is challenging because haze attenuates scene radiance and introduces atmospheric scattering. Recent scattering-aware Gaussian Splatting methods introduce physical haze models into reconstruction, but they often apply degradation in image space or bind medium-related variables to Gaussian primitives, which can entangle clean scene radiance with atmospheric effects. Moreover, low-transmittance regions provide weakened supervision for Gaussian optimization, causing distant or dense-haze areas to be under-reconstructed. We argue that clean reconstruction under haze requires both scene--medium disentanglement and transmittance-aware optimization rebalancing. To this end, we propose Tri-DehazeGS, a scene--medium decoupled Gaussian Splatting framework. It represents the clean scene with Gaussian primitives, models the participating medium using an independent view-shared tri-plane field, and composes hazy observations through a physical scattering model. We further introduce Medium-Decoupled Transmittance Gradient Compensation (MD-TGC), which compensates haze-suppressed gradients after medium freezing without altering forward rendering. Experiments on real and synthetic haze benchmarks show that Tri-DehazeGS improves clean novel-view reconstruction. Code is available at https://github.com/aptx46/Tri-DehazeGS.

Thu 10 SeptComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The gist
Haze in photos can make it hard to see what’s really in a 3D scene, because it blurs and dims objects. The authors developed a new technique called Tri-DehazeGS that separates the clean objects in a scene from the haze effects when reconstructing the scene in 3D. Their method models the haze separately and adjusts how the computer learns from hazy areas, helping it build clearer 3D views from multiple hazy images. Tests with real and simulated hazy pictures showed that their approach produces better clean images from new viewpoints.
Open 2609.11223v1

Densepol dataset boosts accuracy of polarization from rgb images

DensePol: Dense-Angle Polarization Dataset for Learning-Based Polarimetric Vision

Abstract: Polarimetric vision is gaining increasing attention because it provides physical cues about scene shape, material, and reflection that are difficult to recover from RGB alone. Recent work has therefore explored predicting polarization directly from conventional RGB images; however, the fidelity of these methods strongly depends on the polarization supervision used for training. Most existing datasets rely on Division-of-Focal-Plane (DoFP) cameras with four spatially interleaved analyzer orientations, which provide limited angular redundancy and introduce interpolation and instantaneous-field-of-view errors. We introduce DensePol, a high-redundancy RGB--polarization dataset based on Division-of-Time (DoT) acquisition, capturing 180 full-resolution analyzer orientations at $1^\circ$ intervals. DensePol contains 2,018 paired RGB--polarization images with the angular measurements and fitting residuals retained. Dense angular sampling substantially improves polarization stability, reducing AoLP deviation from $13.36^\circ$ to $2.21^\circ$. We further introduce a deterministic diffusion-based RGB-to-polarization framework with cyclic AoLP representation and a local DoLP refiner. Experiments demonstrate improved polarization prediction and downstream surface-normal estimation. The dataset and code will be publicly available.

Tue 8 SeptComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition
The gist
Polarization in vision helps reveal shapes and materials that regular color images cannot easily show. The authors created a new dataset called DensePol that captures detailed polarization information by measuring many angles carefully. This dataset reduces errors in polarization data, helping computer programs learn to predict polarization more accurately from ordinary RGB images. They also developed a new method that uses this dataset to improve predictions and estimate surface shapes better.
Open 2609.09359v1

Functional scene graph improves robot mapping and pose accuracy

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

Abstract: Existing SLAM systems lack modeling of the functional relations required for fine-grained robotic interaction. Functional 3D scene graphs can represent relations between objects and interaction elements, but existing methods rely on offline reconstruction, making them inadequate for real-time interaction in real-world exploration. To address this limitation, we propose Functional-SLAM, the first framework that continuously and recursively maintains a functional scene graph as an online SLAM state. The framework combines anchor-keyframe geometry with functional-context constraints for persistent node maintenance, accumulates multi-frame evidence through temporal relations to commit stable functional edges, and supplements visual loop-closure candidates with functional topology in scenes with repetitive appearance or degraded texture. Experiments show that Functional-SLAM efficiently constructs stable functional maps online, substantially improving runtime over offline methods while maintaining highly competitive accuracy. Compared with peer SLAM systems, it further improves pose estimation accuracy through functional-topology-assisted loop closure. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/Hbelief1998/Functional-SLAM-CoRL_2026.

Mon 7 SeptRobotics
The gist
Robots need to understand not just where things are but how they relate to each other to interact better. The authors developed Functional-SLAM, a system that builds and updates maps showing these functional relationships as the robot explores in real time. This helps the robot make more accurate guesses about its own location, especially in tricky environments where places look similar or textures are poor. Their approach runs faster than older methods that work only after exploring is done.
Open 2609.07497v1