A method for estimating a pose of an object includes: receiving, by a processor, an observed image depicting the object from a viewpoint; computing, by the processor, an instance segmentation map identifying a class of the object depicted in the observed image; loading, by the processor, a 3-D model corresponding to the class of the object; computing, by the processor, a rendered image of the 3-D model in accordance with an initial pose estimate of the object and the viewpoint of the observed image; computing, by the processor, a plurality of dense image-to-object correspondences between the observed image of the object and the 3-D model based on the observed image and the rendered image; and computing, by the processor, the pose of the object based on the dense image-to-object correspondences.