Fast Global Localization on Neural Radiance Field (ICRA 2025)
June 30, 2025 ยท View on GitHub
๐ฅ Overview
Fast-Loc-NeRF is a novel approach for fast and accurate global localization in NeRF maps. While Loc-NeRF introduced the idea of Monte Carlo Localization (MCL) using NeRF, it suffers from slow rendering speed, making it impractical for real-time applications.
Fast-Loc-NeRF improves upon this by introducing:
โ Particle Rejection Weighting: Uses NeRF's inherent uncertainty estimation to filter out unreliable particles.
โ Coarse-to-Fine Matching: Matches rendered pixels with observed images progressively from low to high resolution, reducing computational overhead.
๐๏ธ Overview Diagram
๐ Experimental Results
Fast-Loc-NeRF outperforms existing methods in both accuracy and efficiency.

Figure: Localization accuracy and speed comparison.
๐ฝ๏ธ Video Demonstration

(Click the image to watch the video on YouTube)
Using LLFF Data for Global Localization
Download LLFF images and pretrained NeRF-Pytorch weights from NeRF-Pytorch.
Place data using the following structure:
โโโ configs
โ โโโ ...
โโโ ckpts
โ โ โโโ fern
| | | โโโ fern.tar
โ โ โโโ fortress
| | | โโโ fortress.tar
โ โ โโโ horns
| | | โโโ horns.tar
โ โ โโโ room
| | | โโโ room.tar
โ โ โโโ ...
โโโ data
โ โโโ nerf_llff_data
โ โ โโโ fern # downloaded llff dataset
โ โ โโโ fortress # downloaded llff dataset
โ โ โโโ horns # downloaded llff dataset
| | โโโ room # downloaded llff dataset
| | โโโ ...
After updating your yaml file fast.yaml with the directory where you placed the data and any other params you want to change, you are ready to run Fast-Loc-NeRF! By default, Fast-Loc-NeRF will estimate the camera pose of 5 random images from each of fern, fortress, horns, room (20 images in total). You can use rviz to provide real-time visualization of the ground truth pose and the particles.
1. Installation
System Requirements
- ROS Environment: Install ROS following the official ROS installation guide.
- Docker Support: The system is designed to run in containerized environments using Docker for consistent deployment.
Setup Fast-Loc-NeRF
Option 1: Docker Setup (Recommended)
Fast-Loc-NeRF can be easily deployed using Docker containers, which provides a consistent environment across different systems:
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/kmk97/Fast-Loc-NeRF.git
cd Fast-Loc-NeRF
# Build and run Docker container (detailed Docker setup will be provided)
# Docker configuration handles all dependencies and ROS environment setup automatically
Option 2: Local Installation
# Create workspace for Fast-Loc-NeRF
mkdir -p ~/fast_locnerf_ws/src
cd ~/fast_locnerf_ws/
catkin init
# Clone Fast-Loc-NeRF repository
cd ~/fast_locnerf_ws/src
git clone https://github.com/kmk97/Fast-Loc-NeRF.git
# Build the workspace
catkin build
# Activate the workspace
source ~/fast_locnerf_ws/devel/setup.bash
# Install required Python packages for Fast-Loc-NeRF
cd ~/fast_locnerf_ws/src/Fast-Loc-NeRF
pip install torch torchvision torchaudio
pip install opencv-python numpy scipy matplotlib pyyaml tqdm imageio configargparse
2. Running Fast-Loc-NeRF
Docker Execution (Recommended)
For Docker users, Fast-Loc-NeRF can be launched directly within the containerized environment:
# Run Fast-Loc-NeRF in Docker container
# (Detailed Docker run commands will be provided)
Local Execution
For local installation, launch Fast-Loc-NeRF using ROS:
roslaunch locnerf navigate.launch parameter_file:=<config_file.yaml>
Note: Both Docker and local execution support RViz visualization for monitoring global localization progress and particle distributions.
3. Configuration Files
Fast-Loc-NeRF provides two configuration profiles in the /cfg directory for different experimental scenarios. These configurations work seamlessly in both Docker and local environments:
fast.yaml: Our enhanced configuration featuring particle rejection weighting and coarse-to-fine matching algorithms. This profile showcases Fast-Loc-NeRF's accelerated convergence and improved accuracy in challenging global localization tasks.
Publications
If you find this code relevant for your work, please consider citing our paper:
@article{kong2024fast,
title={Fast global localization on neural radiance field},
author={Kong, Mangyu and Lee, Seongwon and Lee, Jaewon and Kim, Euntai},
journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2406.12202},
year={2024}
}
Acknowledgments
This work is built upon Loc-NeRF and NeRF-Pytorch.
License
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.