CAD-Free Learning of Spacecraft Pose Estimators via NeRF-Based Augmentations

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Legrand, Antoine, Detry, Renaud, De Vleeschouwer, Christophe
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2026
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author Legrand, Antoine
Detry, Renaud
De Vleeschouwer, Christophe
author_facet Legrand, Antoine
Detry, Renaud
De Vleeschouwer, Christophe
contents Spacecraft pose estimation networks require tens of thousands of CAD-rendered images to be trained. This reliance on synthetic CAD data (i) limits applicability to targets with reliable geometry prior, excluding uncooperative or poorly documented spacecraft, and (ii) causes poor generalization to real on-orbit conditions due to unrealistic illumination and material appearance. This paper introduces a NeRF-based image augmentation method that enables the learning of spacecraft pose estimators from only a few tens to a few hundreds of images. The method learns a Neural Radiance Field of the target and generates a large, diverse dataset through geometrically-consistent viewpoint and appearance augmentation. This augmented dataset enables the training of accurate target-specific pose estimators without requiring a CAD model or large synthetic datasets. Experiments show that our approach supports the training of accurate pose estimators from only 25 to 400 realistic images, even under severe illumination variations. When applied on large CAD-based synthetic datasets, the NeRF-based augmentation also enhances out-of-domain generalization, yielding improved robustness to real on-orbit conditions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_19649
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle CAD-Free Learning of Spacecraft Pose Estimators via NeRF-Based Augmentations
Legrand, Antoine
Detry, Renaud
De Vleeschouwer, Christophe
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Spacecraft pose estimation networks require tens of thousands of CAD-rendered images to be trained. This reliance on synthetic CAD data (i) limits applicability to targets with reliable geometry prior, excluding uncooperative or poorly documented spacecraft, and (ii) causes poor generalization to real on-orbit conditions due to unrealistic illumination and material appearance. This paper introduces a NeRF-based image augmentation method that enables the learning of spacecraft pose estimators from only a few tens to a few hundreds of images. The method learns a Neural Radiance Field of the target and generates a large, diverse dataset through geometrically-consistent viewpoint and appearance augmentation. This augmented dataset enables the training of accurate target-specific pose estimators without requiring a CAD model or large synthetic datasets. Experiments show that our approach supports the training of accurate pose estimators from only 25 to 400 realistic images, even under severe illumination variations. When applied on large CAD-based synthetic datasets, the NeRF-based augmentation also enhances out-of-domain generalization, yielding improved robustness to real on-orbit conditions.
title CAD-Free Learning of Spacecraft Pose Estimators via NeRF-Based Augmentations
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.19649