# PseudoAugment: Learning to Use Unlabeled Data for Data Augmentation in Point Clouds

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.13428 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13428/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 56 of its 69 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Oct 2022.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 56)

- [U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.04597/) (2015)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [mixup: Beyond Empirical Risk Minimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.09412/) (2017)
- [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)
- [V-Net: Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Volumetric Medical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04797/) (2016)
- [RandAugment: Practical automated data augmentation with a reduced search space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13719/) (2019)
- [FixMatch: Simplifying Semi-Supervised Learning with Consistency and Confidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07685/) (2020)
- [PointPillars: Fast Encoders for Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05784/) (2018)
- [Improved Regularization of Convolutional Neural Networks with Cutout](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.04552/) (2017)
- [MixMatch: A Holistic Approach to Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02249/) (2019)
- [VoxelNet: End-to-End Learning for Point Cloud Based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06396/) (2017)
- [Self-training with Noisy Student improves ImageNet classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.04252/) (2019)
- [PointRCNN: 3D Object Proposal Generation and Detection from Point Cloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04244/) (2018)
- [PV-RCNN: Point-Voxel Feature Set Abstraction for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.13192/) (2019)
- [Argoverse: 3D Tracking and Forecasting with Rich Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02620/) (2019)
- [AutoAugment: Learning Augmentation Policies from Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.09501/) (2018)
- [Multi-View 3D Object Detection Network for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07759/) (2016)
- [Frustum PointNets for 3D Object Detection from RGB-D Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08488/) (2017)
- [Simple Copy-Paste is a Strong Data Augmentation Method for Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07177/) (2020)
- [Population Based Training of Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09846/) (2017)
- [PIXOR: Real-time 3D Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06326/) (2019)
- [Rethinking Pre-training and Self-training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.06882/) (2020)
- [A Simple Semi-Supervised Learning Framework for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04757/) (2020)
- [Fast AutoAugment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.00397/) (2019)
- [PV-RCNN++: Point-Voxel Feature Set Abstraction With Local Vector Representation for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.00463/) (2021)
- [Cut, Paste and Learn: Surprisingly Easy Synthesis for Instance Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.01642/) (2017)
- [Embracing Single Stride 3D Object Detector with Sparse Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.06375/) (2021)
- [Weakly- and Semi-Supervised Learning of a DCNN for Semantic Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.02734/) (2015)
- [End-to-End Multi-View Fusion for 3D Object Detection in LiDAR Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.06528/) (2019)

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Hierarchical Supervision and Shuffle Data Augmentation for 3D Semi-Supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.01464/) (2023)
- [Advancements in Point Cloud Data Augmentation for Deep Learning: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12113/) (2023)
- [A Survey of Label-Efficient Deep Learning for 3D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.19812/) (2023)
- [Semi-supervised 3D Object Detection with PatchTeacher and PillarMix](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.09787/) (2024)
- [Hardness-Aware Scene Synthesis for Semi-Supervised 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17422/) (2024)
- [Generative Data Augmentation for Object Point Cloud Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17783/) (2025)
- [Power of Cooperative Supervision: Multiple Teachers Framework for Enhanced 3D Semi-Supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.20720/) (2024)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Data augmentation is an important technique to improve data efficiency and save labeling cost for 3D detection in point clouds. Yet, existing augmentation policies have so far been designed to only utilize labeled data, which limits the data diversity. In this paper, we recognize that pseudo labeling and data augmentation are complementary, thus propose to leverage unlabeled data for data augmentation to enrich the training data. In particular, we design three novel pseudo-label based data augmentation policies (PseudoAugments) to fuse both labeled and pseudo-labeled scenes, including frames (PseudoFrame), objecta (PseudoBBox), and background (PseudoBackground). PseudoAugments outperforms pseudo labeling by mitigating pseudo labeling errors and generating diverse fused training scenes. We demonstrate PseudoAugments generalize across point-based and voxel-based architectures, different model capacity and both KITTI and Waymo Open Dataset. To alleviate the cost of hyperparameter tuning and iterative pseudo labeling, we develop a population-based data augmentation framework for 3D detection, named AutoPseudoAugment. Unlike previous works that perform pseudo-labeling offline, our framework performs PseudoAugments and hyperparameter tuning in one shot to reduce computational cost. Experimental results on the large-scale Waymo Open Dataset show our method outperforms state-of-the-art auto data augmentation method (PPBA) and self-training method (pseudo labeling). In particular, AutoPseudoAugment is about 3X and 2X data efficient on vehicle and pedestrian tasks compared to prior arts. Notably, AutoPseudoAugment nearly matches the full dataset training results, with just 10% of the labeled run segments on the vehicle detection task.