---
license: cc-by-nc-4.0
tags:
  - 3d-reconstruction
  - novel-view-synthesis
  - nerf
  - 3d-gaussian-splatting
  - gaussian-splatting
  - 3DGS
  - 3D-computer-vision
  - computer-vision
  - robotics
  - drone
  - aerial
  - colmap
  - SFM
  - camera-pose
---

# PIVOT Dataset

**PIVOT (Pose, Intrinsics and Viewpoint Oriented Testbed)** is a multi-trajectory drone dataset designed for evaluating NeRF and 3D Gaussian Splatting under capture conditions closer to real-world robotics and autonomous systems. It provides multiple structured camera trajectories per scene together with measured sensor-based poses and COLMAP-optimized poses.

<p align="center">
  <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/maryraymond/PIVOT/main/assets/pivot_all_4_fps.gif"
       alt="PIVOT Dataset Overview"
       width="800">
</p>
  
## PIVOT Toolchain

The dataset is accompanied by the **[PIVOT GitHub repository](https://github.com/maryraymond/PIVOT)**, which provides the processing, visualization, dataset-export, and benchmarking tools, the dataset is also integrated with Nerfstudio on this branch **[Nerfstudio PIVOT integration GitHub repository](https://github.com/maryraymond/nerfstudio_PIVOT_integration/tree/pivot_integration)**.

Using PIVOT, the released scenes can be:

- **Interactively visualized**, including the sparse point cloud, measured and COLMAP-optimized camera trajectories, pose errors, trajectory statistics, and directed pose Chamfer distances.
- **Exported directly to Nerfstudio format** for training and evaluation with Nerfstudio-compatible reconstruction methods.

See the **PIVOT repository README** for installation instructions, visualization commands, Nerfstudio export, and benchmark execution.

## Benchmarks & Paper

PIVOT defines benchmarks for **novel-view generalization**, **measured vs. optimized camera poses**, and **calibrated vs. optimized camera intrinsics**.

Benchmark methodology, quantitative results, qualitative results, and analysis are provided in the **[PIVOT paper](PAPER_URL)**.

## Known Issues

- **Church scene — `rocket_upward`:** the rocket-upward trajectory was not successfully registered by COLMAP. The trajectory and its measured poses remain part of the dataset, but COLMAP-optimized poses are unavailable for this trajectory. This is planned to be addressed in an upcoming dataset version.

## Acknowledgements

Special thanks to **Clare County Council** and **Bunratty Castle & Folk Park**, including everyone who assisted with and facilitated the drone captures at the site. Their support and cooperation helped make this research possible.

## License

The PIVOT dataset is released under the **CC BY-NC 4.0** license.