Mutual Information-calibrated Conformal Feature Fusion for Uncertainty-Aware Multimodal 3D Object Detection at the Edge
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Abstract (arXiv)
In the expanding landscape of AI-enabled robotics, robust quantification of predictive uncertainties is of great importance. Three-dimensional (3D) object detection, a critical robotics operation, has seen significant advancements; however, the majority of current works focus only on accuracy and ignore uncertainty quantification. Addressing this gap, our novel study integrates the principles of conformal inference (CI) with information theoretic measures to perform lightweight, Monte Carlo-free uncertainty estimation within a multimodal framework. Through a multivariate Gaussian product of the latent variables in a Variational Autoencoder (VAE), features from RGB camera and LiDAR sensor data are fused to improve the prediction accuracy. Normalized mutual information (NMI) is leveraged as a modulator for calibrating uncertainty bounds derived from CI based on a weighted loss function. Our simulation results show an inverse correlation between inherent predictive uncertainty and NMI throughout the model's training. The framework demonstrates comparable or better performance in KITTI 3D object detection benchmarks to similar methods that are not uncertainty-aware, making it suitable for real-time edge robotics.
Key facts. Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 31 of its 43 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 18 Sep 2023.
Builds on
31 of 43 references.
References · 31
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19 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2024: 1; 2025: 6; 2026: 2.
9 papers.
- 2025Uncertainty Quantification for Machine Learning in Healthcare: A Surveycited by 14
- 2025EigenTrack: Spectral Activation Feature Tracking for Hallucination and Out-of-Distribution Detection in LLMs and VLMscited by 10
- 2025Learnable Conformal Prediction with Context-Aware Nonconformity Functions for Robotic Planning and Perceptioncited by 7
- 2025Beyond Confidence: Adaptive Abstention in Dual-Threshold Conformal Prediction for Autonomous System Perceptioncited by 6
- 2025INTACT: Inducing Noise Tolerance through Adversarial Curriculum Training for LiDAR-based Safety-Critical Perception and Autonomycited by 5
- 2025Intelligent Sensing-to-Action for Robust Autonomy at the Edge: Opportunities and Challengescited by 5
- 2026Uncertainty-Guided Inference-Time Depth Adaptation for Transformer-Based Visual Trackingcited by 3
- 2024Enhancing 3D Robotic Vision Robustness by Minimizing Adversarial Mutual Information through a Curriculum Training Approachcited by 1
- 2026Multimodal Learning on Low-Quality Data with Conformal Predictive Self-Calibrationcited by 0
- 2026Multimodal Learning on Low-Quality Data with Conformal Predictive Self-Calibration5 May 2026
- 2026Uncertainty-Guided Inference-Time Depth Adaptation for Transformer-Based Visual Tracking18 Feb 2026
- 2025Learnable Conformal Prediction with Context-Aware Nonconformity Functions for Robotic Planning and Perception26 Sep 2025
- 2025EigenTrack: Spectral Activation Feature Tracking for Hallucination and Out-of-Distribution Detection in LLMs and VLMs19 Sep 2025
- 2025Uncertainty Quantification for Machine Learning in Healthcare: A Survey4 May 2025
- 2025Beyond Confidence: Adaptive Abstention in Dual-Threshold Conformal Prediction for Autonomous System Perception11 Feb 2025
- 2025Intelligent Sensing-to-Action for Robust Autonomy at the Edge: Opportunities and Challenges4 Feb 2025
- 2025INTACT: Inducing Noise Tolerance through Adversarial Curriculum Training for LiDAR-based Safety-Critical Perception and Autonomy4 Feb 2025
- 2024Enhancing 3D Robotic Vision Robustness by Minimizing Adversarial Mutual Information through a Curriculum Training Approach19 Sep 2024