SAW (SeekAnyWhere)

College of Systems Engineering

National University of Defense Technology

Biography

Welcome to the website of SAW (SeekAnyWhere) Lab. Our lab is affiliated with the College of Systems Engineering at National University of Defense Technology. We are mainly engaged in the field of 3D Computer Vision, particularly including planet-scale digital twins, GPS-independent UAV localization, and physics-based multimodal simulation. Most of our works are open-sourced, please explore our Github Page to know more about our projects!

Join Us: We are looking for self-motivated students and postdocs, please contact this Email if you are interested in working with us.

News

[2025/06] A paper accepted by ICCV 2025

[2025/06] A paper accepted by RA-L 2025

[2024/09] A paper accepted by NeurIPS 2024

[2024/05] Two papers accepted by TGRS 2024

[2024/04] A paper accepted by TGRS 2024

[2023/06] A paper accepted by ICCV 2023

[2023/03] A paper accepted by CVPR 2023

Research Summary

Our lab pioneers 3D geospatial intelligence with a focus on:

‌●‌ Planet-Scale Digital Twins – Generating accurate, photorealistic, semantic, and real-time 3D reconstructions of Earth’s surface for intelligently path planning, equipment and target geolocation, and geospatial analysis.

‌●‌ GPS-Independent UAV Localization – Enabling drones to geolocate and navigate using various map representations (e.g., textured model, white model, DOM+DSM and DOM+DEM) in GPS-denied environments.

‌●‌ Physics-Based Multimodal Simulation – Developing immersive virtual environments for UAV perception, planning, and localization training via sensor simulation (RGB, thermal, LiDAR, et.al).

[Show the research progress]

GPS-Independent UAV Localization
Planet-Scale Digital Twins
Physics-Based Multimodal Simulation

UAV-GeoLoc: A Large-vocabulary Dataset and Geometry-Transformed Method for UAV Geo-Localization

Rouwan Wu, Jiacheng Deng, Mingyu Mou, Xingyi He, Maojun Zhang, Yu Liu, Shen Yan

RA-L 2025

@ARTICLE{11077664,
  author={Wu, Rouwan and Deng, Jiacheng and Mou, Mingyu and He, Xingyi and Zhang, Maojun and Liu, Yu and Yan, Shen},
  journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters},
  title={UAV-GeoLoc: A Large-vocabulary Dataset and Geometry-Transformed Method for UAV Geo-Localization},
  year={2025},
  volume={},
  number={},
  pages={1-8},
  keywords={Autonomous aerial vehicles;Satellites;Urban areas;Satellite images;Training;Drones;Location awareness;Large language models;Engines;Data mining;Localization;recognition;vision-based navigation},
  doi={10.1109/LRA.2025.3588061}}

LoD-Loc v2: Aerial Visual Localization over Low Level-of-Detail City Models using Explicit Silhouette Alignment

Juelin Zhu, Shuaibang Peng, Long Wang, Hanlin Tan, Yu Liu, Maojun Zhang, Shen Yan

ICCV 2025

@inproceedings{zhu2025lod,
  title={LoD-Loc v2: Aerial Visual Localization over Low Level-of-Detail City Models using Explicit Silhouette Alignment},
  author={Zhu, Juelin and Yan, Shen and Wang, Long and Zhang, Shengyue and Liu, Yu and Zhang, Maojun},
  booktitle={},
  pages={},
  year={2025}
}

LoD-Loc: Aerial Visual Localization using LoD 3D Map with Neural Wireframe Alignment

Juelin Zhu*, Shen Yan*, Long Wang, Shengyue Zhang, Yu Liu, Maojun Zhang

NeurIPS 2024

@inproceedings{zhu2024lod,
  title={LoD-Loc: aerial visual localization using LoD 3D map with neural wireframe alignment},
  author={Zhu, Juelin and Yan, Shen and Wang, Long and Zhang, Shengyue and Liu, Yu and Zhang, Maojun},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems},
  pages={119063--119098},
  year={2024}
}

UAVD4L:A Large-Scale Dataset for UAV 6-DoF Localization

Rouwan Wu*, Xiaoya Cheng*, Juelin Zhu, Yuxiang Liu, Maojun Zhang†, Shen Yan

3DV 2024

@inproceedings{wu2024uavd4l,
  title={UAVD4L: A Large-Scale Dataset for UAV 6-DoF Localization},
  author={Wu, Rouwan and Cheng, Xiaoya and Zhu, Juelin and Liu, Yuxiang and Zhang, Maojun and Yan, Shen},
  booktitle={2024 International Conference on 3D Vision (3DV)},
  pages={1574--1583},
  year={2024},
  organization={IEEE}
}

ATLoc: Aerial Thermal Images Localization via View Synthesis

Yuxiang Liu*, Rouwan Wu*, Shen Yan, Xiaoya Cheng, Juelin Zhu, Yu Liu, Maojun Zhang†

TGRS 2024

@ARTICLE{10387530,
  author={Liu, Yuxiang and Wu, Rouwan and Yan, Shen and Cheng, Xiaoya and Zhu, Juelin and Liu, Yu and Zhang, Maojun},
  journal={IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing},
  title={ATLoc: Aerial Thermal Images Localization via View Synthesis},
  year={2024},
  volume={62},
  number={},
  pages={1-13},
  keywords={Location awareness;Cameras;Three-dimensional displays;Solid modeling;6-DOF;Atmospheric modeling;Visualization;Aerial localization;thermal image;view synthesis},
  doi={10.1109/TGRS.2024.3352421}}

Deep Active Contours for Real-time 6-DoF Object Tracking

Long Wang*, Shen Yan*, Jianan Zhen, Yu Liu, Maojun Zhang, Guofeng Zhang, Xiaowei Zhou†

ICCV 2023

@inproceedings{wang2023deep,
  title={Deep active contours for real-time 6-DoF object tracking},
  author={Wang, Long and Yan, Shen and Zhen, Jianan and Liu, Yu and Zhang, Maojun and Zhang, Guofeng and Zhou, Xiaowei},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision},
  pages={14034--14044},
  year={2023}
}

Render-and-compare: Cross-view 6-dof localization from noisy prior

Shen Yan, Xiaoya Cheng, Yuxiang Liu, Juelin Zhu, Rouwan Wu, Yu Liu, Maojun Zhang†

ICME 2023

@inproceedings{yan2023render,
  title={Render-and-compare: Cross-view 6-dof localization from noisy prior},
  author={Yan, Shen and Cheng, Xiaoya and Liu, Yuxiang and Zhu, Juelin and Wu, Rouwan and Liu, Yu and Zhang, Maojun},
  booktitle={2023 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME)},
  pages={2171--2176},
  year={2023},
  organization={IEEE}
}

Long-term Visual Localization with Mobile Sensors

Shen Yan, Yu Liu, Long Wang, Zehong Shen, Zhen Peng, Haomin Liu, Maojun Zhang, Guofeng Zhang, Xiaowei Zhou†

CVPR 2023

@inproceedings{yan2023long,
  title={Long-term Visual Localization with Mobile Sensors},
  author={Yan, Shen and Liu, Yu and Wang, Long and Shen, Zehong and Peng, Zhen and Liu, Haomin and Zhang, Maojun and Zhang, Guofeng and Zhou, Xiaowei},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)},
  pages={17245--17255},
  year={2023}
}

Publications

LoD-Loc v3: Generalized Aerial Localization in Dense Cities using Instance Silhouette Alignment

Shuaibang Peng, Juelin Zhu†, Xia Li, Shen Yan†, Kun Yang, Maojun Zhang, Yu Liu

CVPR 2026

PiLoT: Neural Pixel-to-3D Registration for UAV-based Ego and Target Geo-localization

Xiaoya Cheng, Long Wang, Yan Liu, Xinyi Liu, Hanlin Tan, Yu Liu, Maojun Zhang, Shen Yan†

CVPR 2026

UAV-GeoLoc: A Large-vocabulary Dataset and Geometry-Transformed Method for UAV Geo-Localization

Rouwan Wu, Jiacheng Deng, Mingyu Mou, Xingyi He, Maojun Zhang, Yu Liu, Shen Yan†

RA-L 2025

@ARTICLE{11077664,
  author={Wu, Rouwan and Deng, Jiacheng and Mou, Mingyu and He, Xingyi and Zhang, Maojun and Liu, Yu and Yan, Shen},
  journal={IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters}, 
  title={UAV-GeoLoc: A Large-vocabulary Dataset and Geometry-Transformed Method for UAV Geo-Localization}, 
  year={2025},
  volume={},
  number={},
  pages={1-8},
  keywords={Autonomous aerial vehicles;Satellites;Urban areas;Satellite images;Training;Drones;Location awareness;Large language models;Engines;Data mining;Localization;recognition;vision-based navigation},
  doi={10.1109/LRA.2025.3588061}}

LoD-Loc v2: Aerial Visual Localization over Low Level-of-Detail City Models using Explicit Silhouette Alignment

Juelin Zhu, Shuaibang Peng, Long Wang, Hanlin Tan, Yu Liu, Maojun Zhang, Shen Yan†

ICCV 2025

@inproceedings{zhu2025lod,
  title={LoD-Loc v2: Aerial Visual Localization over Low Level-of-Detail City Models using Explicit Silhouette Alignment},
  author={Zhu, Juelin and Yan, Shen and Wang, Long and Zhang, Shengyue and Liu, Yu and Zhang, Maojun},
  booktitle={},
  pages={},
  year={2025}
}

NTR-Gaussian: Nighttime Dynamic Thermal Reconstruction with 4D Gaussian Splatting Based on Thermodynamics

Kun Yang*, Yuxiang Liu*, Zeyu Cui, Yu Liu, Maojun Zhang, Shen Yan, Qing Wang†

CVPR 2025

@inproceedings{yang2025ntr,
  title={NTR-Gaussian: Nighttime Dynamic Thermal Reconstruction with 4D Gaussian Splatting Based on Thermodynamics},
  author={Yang, Kun and Liu, Yuxiang and Cui, Zeyu and Liu, Yu and Zhang, Maojun and Yan, Shen and Wang, Qing},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference},
  pages={691--700},
  year={2025}
}

ThermalGS: Dynamic 3D Thermal Reconstruction with Gaussian Splatting

Yuxiang Liu, Xi Chen, Shen Yan, Zeyu Cui, Huaxin Xiao, Yu Liu, Maojun Zhang†

Remote Sensing 2025

@article{thermalgs2025,
AUTHOR = {Liu, Yuxiang and Chen, Xi and Yan, Shen and Cui, Zeyu and Xiao, Huaxin and Liu, Yu and Zhang, Maojun},
TITLE = {ThermalGS: Dynamic 3D Thermal Reconstruction with Gaussian Splatting},
JOURNAL = {Remote Sensing},
VOLUME = {17},
YEAR = {2025},
NUMBER = {2},
ARTICLE-NUMBER = {335},
URL = {https://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/17/2/335},
ISSN = {2072-4292},
DOI = {10.3390/rs17020335}
}

LoD-Loc: Aerial Visual Localization using LoD 3D Map with Neural Wireframe Alignment

Juelin Zhu*, Shen Yan*, Long Wang, Shengyue Zhang, Yu Liu, Maojun Zhang†

NeurIPS 2024

@inproceedings{zhu2024lod,
  title={LoD-Loc: aerial visual localization using LoD 3D map with neural wireframe alignment},
  author={Zhu, Juelin and Yan, Shen and Wang, Long and Zhang, Shengyue and Liu, Yu and Zhang, Maojun},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems},
  pages={119063--119098},
  year={2024}
}

Spectral–spatial Adversarial Multidomain Synthesis Network for Cross-scene Hyperspectral Image Classification

Xi Chen, Lin Gao, Maojun Zhang†, Chen Chen, Shen Yan

TGRS 2024

@article{chen2024spectral,
  title={Spectral--spatial adversarial multidomain synthesis network for cross-scene hyperspectral image classification},
  author={Chen, Xi and Gao, Lin and Zhang, Maojun and Chen, Chen and Yan, Shen},
  journal={IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing},
  volume={62},
  pages={1--16},
  year={2024},
  publisher={IEEE}
}

Target Detection With Spectral Graph Contrast Clustering Assignment and Spectral Graph Transformer in Hyperspectral Imagery

Xi Chen, Maojun Zhang†, Yu Liu

TGRS 2024

@article{chen2024target,
  title={Target detection with spectral graph contrast clustering assignment and spectral graph transformer in hyperspectral imagery},
  author={Chen, Xi and Zhang, Maojun and Liu, Yu},
  journal={IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing},
  volume={62},
  pages={1--16},
  year={2024},
  publisher={IEEE}
}

UAVD4L:A Large-Scale Dataset for UAV 6-DoF Localization

Rouwan Wu*, Xiaoya Cheng*, Juelin Zhu, Yuxiang Liu, Maojun Zhang†, Shen Yan

3DV 2024

@inproceedings{wu2024uavd4l,
  title={UAVD4L: A Large-Scale Dataset for UAV 6-DoF Localization},
  author={Wu, Rouwan and Cheng, Xiaoya and Zhu, Juelin and Liu, Yuxiang and Zhang, Maojun and Yan, Shen},
  booktitle={2024 International Conference on 3D Vision (3DV)},
  pages={1574--1583},
  year={2024},
  organization={IEEE}
}

ATLoc: Aerial Thermal Images Localization via View Synthesis

Yuxiang Liu*, Rouwan Wu*, Shen Yan, Xiaoya Cheng, Juelin Zhu, Yu Liu, Maojun Zhang†

TGRS 2024

@ARTICLE{10387530,
  author={Liu, Yuxiang and Wu, Rouwan and Yan, Shen and Cheng, Xiaoya and Zhu, Juelin and Liu, Yu and Zhang, Maojun},
  journal={IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing}, 
  title={ATLoc: Aerial Thermal Images Localization via View Synthesis}, 
  year={2024},
  volume={62},
  number={},
  pages={1-13},
  keywords={Location awareness;Cameras;Three-dimensional displays;Solid modeling;6-DOF;Atmospheric modeling;Visualization;Aerial localization;thermal image;view synthesis},
  doi={10.1109/TGRS.2024.3352421}}

Deep Active Contours for Real-time 6-DoF Object Tracking

Long Wang*, Shen Yan*, Jianan Zhen, Yu Liu, Maojun Zhang, Guofeng Zhang, Xiaowei Zhou†

ICCV 2023

@inproceedings{wang2023deep,
  title={Deep active contours for real-time 6-DoF object tracking},
  author={Wang, Long and Yan, Shen and Zhen, Jianan and Liu, Yu and Zhang, Maojun and Zhang, Guofeng and Zhou, Xiaowei},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF International Conference on Computer Vision},
  pages={14034--14044},
  year={2023}
}

Render-and-compare: Cross-view 6-dof localization from noisy prior

Shen Yan, Xiaoya Cheng, Yuxiang Liu, Juelin Zhu, Rouwan Wu, Yu Liu, Maojun Zhang†

ICME 2023

@inproceedings{yan2023render,
  title={Render-and-compare: Cross-view 6-dof localization from noisy prior},
  author={Yan, Shen and Cheng, Xiaoya and Liu, Yuxiang and Zhu, Juelin and Wu, Rouwan and Liu, Yu and Zhang, Maojun},
  booktitle={2023 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME)},
  pages={2171--2176},
  year={2023},
  organization={IEEE}
}

Long-term Visual Localization with Mobile Sensors

Shen Yan, Yu Liu, Long Wang, Zehong Shen, Zhen Peng, Haomin Liu, Maojun Zhang, Guofeng Zhang, Xiaowei Zhou†

CVPR 2023

@inproceedings{yan2023long,
  title={Long-term Visual Localization with Mobile Sensors},
  author={Yan, Shen and Liu, Yu and Wang, Long and Shen, Zehong and Peng, Zhen and Liu, Haomin and Zhang, Maojun and Zhang, Guofeng and Zhou, Xiaowei},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR)},
  pages={17245--17255},
  year={2023}
}