# Multi-Modal 3D Object Detection in Autonomous Driving: a Survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.12735 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12735/

## Key facts

- Cited by 63 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 120 of its 226 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Jun 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 120)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [Microsoft COCO: Common Objects in Context](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1405.0312/) (2014)
- [Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1409.1556/) (2014)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [Densely Connected Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.06993/) (2016)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [Fully Convolutional Networks for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.4038/) (2014)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [The Cityscapes Dataset for Semantic Urban Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01685/) (2016)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [DeepLab: Semantic Image Segmentation with Deep Convolutional Nets, Atrous Convolution, and Fully Connected CRFs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.00915/) (2016)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [Fast R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.08083/) (2015)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03938/) (2017)
- [Non-local Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.07971/) (2017)
- [Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1311.2524/) (2013)
- [DARTS: Differentiable Architecture Search](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1806.09055/) (2018)
- [PointPillars: Fast Encoders for Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05784/) (2018)
- [VoxelNet: End-to-End Learning for Point Cloud Based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06396/) (2017)
- [How transferable are features in deep neural networks?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1411.1792/) (2014)
- [Center-based 3D Object Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11275/) (2020)
- [Convolutional Neural Networks for Sentence Classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1408.5882/) (2014)
- [Lift, Splat, Shoot: Encoding Images From Arbitrary Camera Rigs by Implicitly Unprojecting to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05711/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 63)

- [MapTRv2: An End-to-End Framework for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05736/) (2023)
- [3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09474/) (2022)
- [LoGoNet: Towards Accurate 3D Object Detection with Local-to-Global Cross-Modal Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03595/) (2023)
- [Multi-modal Sensor Fusion for Auto Driving Perception: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02703/) (2022)
- [BEVDistill: Cross-Modal BEV Distillation for Multi-View 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09386/) (2022)
- [VPFNet: Improving 3D Object Detection with Virtual Point based LiDAR and Stereo Data Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14382/) (2021)
- [Stream Query Denoising for Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.09112/) (2024)
- [TiG-BEV: Multi-view BEV 3D Object Detection via Target Inner-Geometry Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.13979/) (2022)
- [GraphAlign: Enhancing Accurate Feature Alignment by Graph matching for Multi-Modal 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08261/) (2023)
- [Learning Modality-agnostic Representation for Semantic Segmentation from Any Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11351/) (2024)
- [Bi-LRFusion: Bi-Directional LiDAR-Radar Fusion for 3D Dynamic Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.01438/) (2023)
- [Towards Domain Generalization for Multi-view 3D Object Detection in Bird-Eye-View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.01686/) (2023)
- [Text2LiDAR: Text-guided LiDAR Point Cloud Generation via Equirectangular Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.19628/) (2024)
- [Homogeneous Multi-modal Feature Fusion and Interaction for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.09615/) (2022)
- [Centering the Value of Every Modality: Towards Efficient and Resilient Modality-agnostic Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.11344/) (2024)
- [RoboFusion: Towards Robust Multi-Modal 3D Object Detection via SAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03907/) (2024)
- [MultiCorrupt: A Multi-Modal Robustness Dataset and Benchmark of LiDAR-Camera Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11677/) (2024)
- [MSSF: A 4D Radar and Camera Fusion Framework With Multi-Stage Sampling for 3D Object Detection in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.15016/) (2024)
- [MAGIC++: Efficient and Resilient Modality-Agnostic Semantic Segmentation via Hierarchical Modality Selection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16876/) (2024)
- [RENO: Real-Time Neural Compression for 3D LiDAR Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12382/) (2025)
- [JPerceiver: Joint Perception Network for Depth, Pose and Layout Estimation in Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.07895/) (2022)
- [Multi-Sem Fusion: Multimodal Semantic Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05265/) (2022)
- [LiRaFusion: Deep Adaptive LiDAR-Radar Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11735/) (2024)
- [HVDistill: Transferring Knowledge from Images to Point Clouds via Unsupervised Hybrid-View Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.11817/) (2024)
- [Agent-Centric Relation Graph for Object Visual Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.14422/) (2021)
- [Radars for Autonomous Driving: A Review of Deep Learning Methods and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09304/) (2023)
- [Deep Transfer Learning for Intelligent Vehicle Perception: a Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.15110/) (2023)
- [Advancing Object Detection in Transportation with Multimodal Large Language Models (MLLMs): A Comprehensive Review and Empirical Testing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18286/) (2024)
- [Learning Robust Anymodal Segmentor with Unimodal and Cross-modal Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.17141/) (2024)
- [RayFormer: Improving Query-Based Multi-Camera 3D Object Detection via Ray-Centric Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.14923/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In this survey, we first introduce the background of popular sensors used for self-driving, their data properties, and the corresponding object detection algorithms. Next, we discuss existing datasets that can be used for evaluating multi-modal 3D object detection algorithms. Then we present a review of multi-modal fusion based 3D detection networks, taking a close look at their fusion stage, fusion input and fusion granularity, and how these design choices evolve with time and technology. After the review, we discuss open challenges as well as possible solutions. We hope that this survey can help researchers to get familiar with the field and embark on investigations in the area of multi-modal 3D object detection.