# Curriculum Model Adaptation with Synthetic and Real Data for Semantic Foggy Scene Understanding

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1901.01415 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.01415/

## Key facts

- Cited by 40 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 5 Jan 2019.

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [Curriculum Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.10382/) (2021)
- [MIC: Masked Image Consistency for Context-Enhanced Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.01322/) (2022)
- [HRDA: Context-Aware High-Resolution Domain-Adaptive Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.13132/) (2022)
- [Instance Segmentation in the Dark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.14298/) (2023)
- [MUSES: The Multi-Sensor Semantic Perception Dataset for Driving under Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12761/) (2024)
- [FIFO: Learning Fog-invariant Features for Foggy Scene Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01587/) (2022)
- [Refign: Align and Refine for Adaptation of Semantic Segmentation to Adverse Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06825/) (2022)
- [Human Pose Estimation in Extremely Low-Light Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.15410/) (2023)
- [Both Style and Fog Matter: Cumulative Domain Adaptation for Semantic Foggy Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.00484/) (2021)
- [Domain Adaptive and Generalizable Network Architectures and Training Strategies for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13615/) (2023)
- [MUAD: Multiple Uncertainties for Autonomous Driving, a benchmark for multiple uncertainty types and tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01437/) (2022)
- [ACDC: The Adverse Conditions Dataset with Correspondences for Robust Semantic Driving Scene Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.13395/) (2021)
- [Domain-Specific Bias Filtering for Single Labeled Domain Generalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.00726/) (2021)
- [Combating Label Distribution Shift for Active Domain Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.06604/) (2022)
- [CoDA: Instructive Chain-of-Domain Adaptation with Severity-Aware Visual Prompt Tuning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17369/) (2024)
- [Contrastive Model Adaptation for Cross-Condition Robustness in Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05194/) (2023)
- [InfraParis: A multi-modal and multi-task autonomous driving dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15751/) (2023)
- [A Curriculum-style Self-training Approach for Source-Free Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11653/) (2021)
- [Worsening Perception: Real-time Degradation of Autonomous Vehicle Perception Performance for Simulation of Adverse Weather Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.02760/) (2021)
- [SynFog: A Photo-realistic Synthetic Fog Dataset based on End-to-end Imaging Simulation for Advancing Real-World Defogging in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.17094/) (2024)
- [Unsupervised Foggy Scene Understanding via Self Spatial-Temporal Label Diffusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.04879/) (2022)
- [FogAdapt: Self-Supervised Domain Adaptation for Semantic Segmentation of Foggy Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.02588/) (2022)
- [VBLC: Visibility Boosting and Logit-Constraint Learning for Domain Adaptive Semantic Segmentation under Adverse Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.12256/) (2022)
- [Condition-Invariant Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.17349/) (2023)
- [FREST: Feature RESToration for Semantic Segmentation under Multiple Adverse Conditions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.13437/) (2024)
- [StyleLess layer: Improving robustness for real-world driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.13905/) (2021)
- [Adverse Weather Optical Flow: Cumulative Homogeneous-Heterogeneous Adaptation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.17001/) (2024)
- [Unsupervised Domain Adaptation from Axial to Short-Axis Multi-Slice Cardiac MR Images by Incorporating Pretrained Task Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.07653/) (2021)
- [Distribution Regularized Self-Supervised Learning for Domain Adaptation of Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09683/) (2022)
- [A Dataset for Semantic Segmentation in the Presence of Unknowns](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.22309/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This work addresses the problem of semantic scene understanding under fog. Although marked progress has been made in semantic scene understanding, it is mainly concentrated on clear-weather scenes. Extending semantic segmentation methods to adverse weather conditions such as fog is crucial for outdoor applications. In this paper, we propose a novel method, named Curriculum Model Adaptation (CMAda), which gradually adapts a semantic segmentation model from light synthetic fog to dense real fog in multiple steps, using both labeled synthetic foggy data and unlabeled real foggy data. The method is based on the fact that the results of semantic segmentation in moderately adverse conditions (light fog) can be bootstrapped to solve the same problem in highly adverse conditions (dense fog). CMAda is extensible to other adverse conditions and provides a new paradigm for learning with synthetic data and unlabeled real data. In addition, we present three other main stand-alone contributions: 1) a novel method to add synthetic fog to real, clear-weather scenes using semantic input; 2) a new fog density estimator; 3) a novel fog densification method to densify the fog in real foggy scenes without using depth; and 4) the Foggy Zurich dataset comprising 3808 real foggy images, with pixel-level semantic annotations for 40 images under dense fog. Our experiments show that 1) our fog simulation and fog density estimator outperform their state-of-the-art counterparts with respect to the task of semantic foggy scene understanding (SFSU); 2) CMAda improves the performance of state-of-the-art models for SFSU significantly, benefiting both from our synthetic and real foggy data. The datasets and code are available at the project website.