# 3D Object Detection from Images for Autonomous Driving: A Survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2202.02980 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.02980/

## Key facts

- Cited by 66 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 172 of its 229 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Feb 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 172)

- [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)
- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [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)
- [Momentum Contrast for Unsupervised Visual Representation Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.05722/) (2019)
- [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)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [Squeeze-and-Excitation Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.01507/) (2017)
- [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)
- [Aggregated Residual Transformations for Deep Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.05431/) (2016)
- [CBAM: Convolutional Block Attention Module](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06521/) (2018)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [Rich feature hierarchies for accurate object detection and semantic segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1311.2524/) (2013)
- [FixMatch: Simplifying Semi-Supervised Learning with Consistency and Confidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07685/) (2020)
- [Unsupervised Representation Learning with Deep Convolutional Generative Adversarial Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1511.06434/) (2015)
- [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)
- [Deformable Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06211/) (2017)
- [MixMatch: A Holistic Approach to Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02249/) (2019)
- [Multi-Task Learning Using Uncertainty to Weigh Losses for Scene Geometry and Semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1705.07115/) (2017)

## Built on by (most cited first, 30 of 66)

- [BEVFormer: Learning Bird's-Eye-View Representation from Multi-Camera Images via Spatiotemporal Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17270/) (2022)
- [A Survey on 3D Gaussian Splatting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.03890/) (2024)
- [3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09474/) (2022)
- [OccSora: 4D Occupancy Generation Models as World Simulators for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20337/) (2024)
- [Bird's-Eye-View Scene Graph for Vision-Language Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04758/) (2023)
- [DEVIANT: Depth EquiVarIAnt NeTwork for Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10758/) (2022)
- [ReSim: Reliable World Simulation for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.09981/) (2025)
- [A Survey on Occupancy Perception for Autonomous Driving: The Information Fusion Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05173/) (2024)
- [Detect Anything 3D in the Wild](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.07958/) (2025)
- [Vision-based 3D occupancy prediction in autonomous driving: a review and outlook](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.02595/) (2024)
- [OccFlowNet: Towards Self-supervised Occupancy Estimation via Differentiable Rendering and Occupancy Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.12792/) (2024)
- [Doracamom: Joint 3D Detection and Occupancy Prediction with Multi-view 4D Radars and Cameras for Omnidirectional Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.15394/) (2025)
- [Focal-PETR: Embracing Foreground for Efficient Multi-Camera 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.05505/) (2022)
- [DPFT: Dual Perspective Fusion Transformer for Camera-Radar-based Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03015/) (2024)
- [RaCFormer: Towards High-Quality 3D Object Detection via Query-based Radar-Camera Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.12725/) (2024)
- [Data-Centric Evolution in Autonomous Driving: A Comprehensive Survey of Big Data System, Data Mining, and Closed-Loop Technologies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.12888/) (2024)
- [Calibration-free BEV Representation for Infrastructure Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.03583/) (2023)
- [HGSFusion: Radar-Camera Fusion with Hybrid Generation and Synchronization for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.11489/) (2024)
- [SeaBird: Segmentation in Bird's View with Dice Loss Improves Monocular 3D Detection of Large Objects](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.20318/) (2024)
- [RCBEVDet++: Toward High-accuracy Radar-Camera Fusion 3D Perception Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.04979/) (2024)
- [Unleashing the Power of Chain-of-Prediction for Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.04594/) (2025)
- [Monocular 3D lane detection for Autonomous Driving: Recent Achievements, Challenges, and Outlooks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.06860/) (2024)
- [RayFormer: Improving Query-Based Multi-Camera 3D Object Detection via Ray-Centric Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.14923/) (2024)
- [Harnessing Uncertainty-aware Bounding Boxes for Unsupervised 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.00619/) (2024)
- [Make Your ViT-based Multi-view 3D Detectors Faster via Token Compression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.00633/) (2024)
- [Monocular 3D Object Detection with Bounding Box Denoising in 3D by Perceiver](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01289/) (2023)
- [OA-DET3D: Embedding Object Awareness as a General Plug-in for Multi-Camera 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.05711/) (2023)
- [TripleMixer: A 3D Point Cloud Denoising Model for Adverse Weather](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.13802/) (2024)
- [Joint Perception and Prediction for Autonomous Driving: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.14088/) (2024)
- [CHARM3R: Towards Unseen Camera Height Robust Monocular 3D Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.11185/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D object detection from images, one of the fundamental and challenging problems in autonomous driving, has received increasing attention from both industry and academia in recent years. Benefiting from the rapid development of deep learning technologies, image-based 3D detection has achieved remarkable progress. Particularly, more than 200 works have studied this problem from 2015 to 2021, encompassing a broad spectrum of theories, algorithms, and applications. However, to date no recent survey exists to collect and organize this knowledge. In this paper, we fill this gap in the literature and provide the first comprehensive survey of this novel and continuously growing research field, summarizing the most commonly used pipelines for image-based 3D detection and deeply analyzing each of their components. Additionally, we also propose two new taxonomies to organize the state-of-the-art methods into different categories, with the intent of providing a more systematic review of existing methods and facilitating fair comparisons with future works. In retrospect of what has been achieved so far, we also analyze the current challenges in the field and discuss future directions for image-based 3D detection research.