MoD-SLAM: Monocular Dense Mapping for Unbounded 3D Scene Reconstruction

Neural implicit representations have recently been demonstrated in many fields including Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM). Current neural SLAM can achieve ideal results in reconstructing bounded scenes, but this relies on the input of RGB-D images. Neural-based SLAM based only on RGB images is unable to reconstruct the scale of the scene accurately, and it also suffers from scale drift due to errors accumulated during tracking. To overcome these limitations, we present MoD-SLAM, a monocular dense mapping method that allows global pose optimization and 3D reconstruction in real-time in unbounded scenes. Optimizing scene reconstruction by monocular depth estimation and using loop closure detection to update camera pose enable detailed and precise reconstruction on large scenes. Compared to previous work, our approach is more robust, scalable and versatile. Our experiments demonstrate that MoD-SLAM has more excellent mapping performance than prior neural SLAM methods, especially in large borderless scenes.

SGS-SLAM: Semantic Gaussian Splatting For Neural Dense SLAM

Semantic understanding plays a crucial role in Dense Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM), facilitating comprehensive scene interpretation. Recent advancements that integrate Gaussian Splatting into SLAM systems have demonstrated its effectiveness in generating high-quality renderings through the use of explicit 3D Gaussian representations. Building on this progress, we propose SGS-SLAM, the first semantic dense visual SLAM system grounded in 3D Gaussians, which provides precise 3D semantic segmentation alongside high-fidelity reconstructions. Specifically, we propose to employ multi-channel optimization during the mapping process, integrating appearance, geometric, and semantic constraints with key-frame optimization to enhance reconstruction quality. Extensive experiments demonstrate that SGS-SLAM delivers state-of-the-art performance in camera pose estimation, map reconstruction, and semantic segmentation, outperforming existing methods meanwhile preserving real-time rendering ability.

CEIR: Concept-based Explainable Image Representation Learning

In modern machine learning, the trend of harnessing self-supervised learning to derive high-quality representations without label dependency has garnered significant attention. However, the absence of label information, coupled with the inherently high-dimensional nature, improves the difficulty for the interpretation of learned representations. Consequently, indirect evaluations become the popular metric for evaluating the quality of these features, leading to a biased validation of the learned representation rationale. To address these challenges, we introduce a novel approach termed Concept-based Explainable Image Representation (CEIR). Initially, using the Concept-based Model (CBM) incorporated with pretrained CLIP and concepts generated by GPT-4, we project input images into a concept vector space. Subsequently, a Variational Autoencoder (VAE) learns the latent representation from these projected concepts, which serves as the final image representation. Due to the capability of the representation to encapsulate high-level, semantically relevant concepts, the model allows for attributions to a human-comprehensible concept space. This not only enhances interpretability but also preserves the robustness essential for downstream tasks. For instance, our method exhibits state-of-the-art unsupervised clustering performance on benchmarks such as CIFAR10, CIFAR100, and STL10. Furthermore, capitalizing on the universality of human conceptual understanding, CEIR can seamlessly extract the related concept from open-world images without fine-tuning. This offers a fresh approach to automatic label generation and label manipulation.