Quantum Multiple Rotation Averaging

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wang, Shuteng, Meli, Natacha Kuete, Möller, Michael, Golyanik, Vladislav
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Wang, Shuteng
Meli, Natacha Kuete
Möller, Michael
Golyanik, Vladislav
author_facet Wang, Shuteng
Meli, Natacha Kuete
Möller, Michael
Golyanik, Vladislav
contents Multiple rotation averaging (MRA) is a fundamental optimization problem in 3D vision and robotics that aims to recover globally consistent absolute rotations from noisy relative measurements. Established classical methods, such as L1-IRLS and Shonan, face limitations including local minima susceptibility and reliance on convex relaxations that fail to preserve the exact manifold geometry, leading to reduced accuracy in high-noise scenarios. We introduce IQARS (Iterative Quantum Annealing for Rotation Synchronization), the first algorithm that reformulates MRA as a sequence of local quadratic non-convex sub-problems executable on quantum annealers after binarization, to leverage inherent hardware advantages. IQARS removes convex relaxation dependence and better preserves non-Euclidean rotation manifold geometry while leveraging quantum tunneling and parallelism for efficient solution space exploration. We evaluate IQARS's performance on synthetic and real-world datasets. While current annealers remain in their nascent phase and only support solving problems of limited scale with constrained performance, we observed that IQARS on D-Wave annealers can already achieve ca. 12% higher accuracy than Shonan, i.e., the best-performing classical method evaluated empirically.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_10115
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Quantum Multiple Rotation Averaging
Wang, Shuteng
Meli, Natacha Kuete
Möller, Michael
Golyanik, Vladislav
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Multiple rotation averaging (MRA) is a fundamental optimization problem in 3D vision and robotics that aims to recover globally consistent absolute rotations from noisy relative measurements. Established classical methods, such as L1-IRLS and Shonan, face limitations including local minima susceptibility and reliance on convex relaxations that fail to preserve the exact manifold geometry, leading to reduced accuracy in high-noise scenarios. We introduce IQARS (Iterative Quantum Annealing for Rotation Synchronization), the first algorithm that reformulates MRA as a sequence of local quadratic non-convex sub-problems executable on quantum annealers after binarization, to leverage inherent hardware advantages. IQARS removes convex relaxation dependence and better preserves non-Euclidean rotation manifold geometry while leveraging quantum tunneling and parallelism for efficient solution space exploration. We evaluate IQARS's performance on synthetic and real-world datasets. While current annealers remain in their nascent phase and only support solving problems of limited scale with constrained performance, we observed that IQARS on D-Wave annealers can already achieve ca. 12% higher accuracy than Shonan, i.e., the best-performing classical method evaluated empirically.
title Quantum Multiple Rotation Averaging
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.10115