# Exploring Simple 3D Multi-Object Tracking for Autonomous Driving

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.10312 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10312/

## Key facts

- Cited by 56 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 32 of its 38 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 Aug 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 32)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [PointPillars: Fast Encoders for Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05784/) (2018)
- [FCOS: Fully Convolutional One-Stage Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01355/) (2019)
- [VoxelNet: End-to-End Learning for Point Cloud Based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06396/) (2017)
- [Simple Online and Realtime Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.00763/) (2016)
- [Focal Loss for Dense Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.02002/) (2017)
- [TrackFormer: Multi-Object Tracking with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.02702/) (2021)
- [FairMOT: On the Fairness of Detection and Re-Identification in Multiple Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01888/) (2020)
- [Tracking Objects as Points](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01177/) (2020)
- [Tracking without bells and whistles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.05625/) (2019)
- [TransTrack: Multiple Object Tracking with Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15460/) (2020)
- [Class-balanced Grouping and Sampling for Point Cloud 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09492/) (2019)
- [Fast and Furious: Real Time End-to-End 3D Detection, Tracking and Motion Forecasting with a Single Convolutional Net](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.12395/) (2020)
- [Joint Discriminative and Generative Learning for Person Re-identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07223/) (2019)
- [End-to-End Multi-View Fusion for 3D Object Detection in LiDAR Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.06528/) (2019)
- [PnPNet: End-to-End Perception and Prediction with Tracking in the Loop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14711/) (2020)
- [Detect to Track and Track to Detect](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.03958/) (2017)
- [Chained-Tracker: Chaining Paired Attentive Regression Results for End-to-End Joint Multiple-Object Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.14557/) (2020)
- [MotionNet: Joint Perception and Motion Prediction for Autonomous Driving Based on Bird's Eye View Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.06754/) (2020)
- [Joint Disentangling and Adaptation for Cross-Domain Person Re-Identification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.10315/) (2020)
- [Instance-aware, Context-focused, and Memory-efficient Weakly Supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.04725/) (2020)
- [Probabilistic 3D Multi-Modal, Multi-Object Tracking for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.13755/) (2020)
- [RetinaTrack: Online Single Stage Joint Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13870/) (2020)
- [Probabilistic 3D Multi-Object Tracking for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.05673/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 56)

- [MPPNet: Multi-Frame Feature Intertwining with Proxy Points for 3D Temporal Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.05979/) (2022)
- [Beyond 3D Siamese Tracking: A Motion-Centric Paradigm for 3D Single Object Tracking in Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01730/) (2022)
- [PillarNeXt: Rethinking Network Designs for 3D Object Detection in LiDAR Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04925/) (2023)
- [ProphNet: Efficient Agent-Centric Motion Forecasting with Anchor-Informed Proposals](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12071/) (2023)
- [DistillBEV: Boosting Multi-Camera 3D Object Detection with Cross-Modal Knowledge Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15109/) (2023)
- [CC-3DT: Panoramic 3D Object Tracking via Cross-Camera Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.01247/) (2022)
- [Once Detected, Never Lost: Surpassing Human Performance in Offline LiDAR based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12315/) (2023)
- [Collaborative Multi-Object Tracking with Conformal Uncertainty Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14346/) (2023)
- [GEDepth: Ground Embedding for Monocular Depth Estimation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09975/) (2023)
- [MotionTrack: End-to-End Transformer-based Multi-Object Tracing with LiDAR-Camera Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17000/) (2023)
- [GNN-PMB: A Simple but Effective Online 3D Multi-Object Tracker without Bells and Whistles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10255/) (2022)
- [An Effective Motion-Centric Paradigm for 3D Single Object Tracking in Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.12535/) (2023)
- [4D-Former: Multimodal 4D Panoptic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01520/) (2023)
- [Delving into Motion-Aware Matching for Monocular 3D Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.11607/) (2023)
- [CR3DT: Camera-RADAR Fusion for 3D Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15313/) (2024)
- [Minkowski Tracker: A Sparse Spatio-Temporal R-CNN for Joint Object Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.10056/) (2022)
- [Transcendental Idealism of Planner: Evaluating Perception from Planning Perspective for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.07276/) (2023)
- [LEGO: Learning and Graph-Optimized Modular Tracker for Online Multi-Object Tracking with Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09908/) (2023)
- [ReasoningTrack: Chain-of-Thought Reasoning for Long-term Vision-Language Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.05221/) (2025)
- [Recent Advances in Embedding Methods for Multi-Object Tracking: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.10766/) (2022)
- [QML for Argoverse 2 Motion Forecasting Challenge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.06553/) (2022)
- [InterTrack: Interaction Transformer for 3D Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.08041/) (2022)
- [3DMODT: Attention-Guided Affinities for Joint Detection & Tracking in 3D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.00746/) (2022)
- [PD-SORT: Occlusion-Robust Multi-Object Tracking Using Pseudo-Depth Cues](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.11288/) (2025)
- [Fully Spiking Neural Networks for Unified Frame-Event Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.20834/) (2025)
- [Learning Moving-Object Tracking with FMCW LiDAR](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00959/) (2022)
- [3D Multiple Object Tracking on Autonomous Driving: A Literature Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15411/) (2023)
- [TrafficMOT: A Challenging Dataset for Multi-Object Tracking in Complex Traffic Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.18839/) (2023)
- [Engineering an Efficient Object Tracker for Non-Linear Motion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.00738/) (2024)
- [JDT3D: Addressing the Gaps in LiDAR-Based Tracking-by-Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04926/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D multi-object tracking in LiDAR point clouds is a key ingredient for self-driving vehicles. Existing methods are predominantly based on the tracking-by-detection pipeline and inevitably require a heuristic matching step for the detection association. In this paper, we present SimTrack to simplify the hand-crafted tracking paradigm by proposing an end-to-end trainable model for joint detection and tracking from raw point clouds. Our key design is to predict the first-appear location of each object in a given snippet to get the tracking identity and then update the location based on motion estimation. In the inference, the heuristic matching step can be completely waived by a simple read-off operation. SimTrack integrates the tracked object association, newborn object detection, and dead track killing in a single unified model. We conduct extensive evaluations on two large-scale datasets: nuScenes and Waymo Open Dataset. Experimental results reveal that our simple approach compares favorably with the state-of-the-art methods while ruling out the heuristic matching rules.