# Radar Instance Transformer: Reliable Moving Instance Segmentation in Sparse Radar Point Clouds

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.16435 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16435/

## Key facts

- Cited by 9 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 73 of its 98 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Sep 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 73)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [Batch Normalization: Accelerating Deep Network Training by Reducing Internal Covariate Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1502.03167/) (2015)
- [Layer Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1607.06450/) (2016)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [SGDR: Stochastic Gradient Descent with Warm Restarts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03983/) (2016)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Masked-attention Mask Transformer for Universal Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.01527/) (2021)
- [Point Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00931/) (2020)
- [Deep High-Resolution Representation Learning for Visual Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07919/) (2019)
- [4D Spatio-Temporal ConvNets: Minkowski Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08755/) (2019)
- [KPConv: Flexible and Deformable Convolution for Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08889/) (2019)
- [Tokens-to-Token ViT: Training Vision Transformers from Scratch on ImageNet](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.11986/) (2021)
- [ORB-SLAM3: An Accurate Open-Source Library for Visual, Visual-Inertial and Multi-Map SLAM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2007.11898/) (2020)
- [3D Semantic Segmentation with Submanifold Sparse Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10275/) (2017)
- [PCT: Point cloud transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09688/) (2020)
- [PointNeXt: Revisiting PointNet++ with Improved Training and Scaling Strategies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.04670/) (2022)
- [Early Convolutions Help Transformers See Better](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.14881/) (2021)
- [Cylindrical and Asymmetrical 3D Convolution Networks for LiDAR Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10033/) (2020)
- [Large-scale Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation with Superpoint Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09869/) (2017)
- [Exploring Self-attention for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.13621/) (2020)
- [Mask3D: Mask Transformer for 3D Semantic Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03105/) (2022)
- [PolarNet: An Improved Grid Representation for Online LiDAR Point Clouds Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.14032/) (2020)
- [SqueezeSeg: Convolutional Neural Nets with Recurrent CRF for Real-Time Road-Object Segmentation from 3D LiDAR Point Cloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.07368/) (2017)
- [SqueezeSegV2: Improved Model Structure and Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Road-Object Segmentation from a LiDAR Point Cloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.08495/) (2018)
- [SalsaNext: Fast, Uncertainty-aware Semantic Segmentation of LiDAR Point Clouds for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.03653/) (2020)
- [PAConv: Position Adaptive Convolution with Dynamic Kernel Assembling on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14635/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [On the Federated Learning Framework for Cooperative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.17147/) (2024)
- [CaRaFFusion: Improving 2D Semantic Segmentation with Camera-Radar Point Cloud Fusion and Zero-Shot Image Inpainting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.03679/) (2025)
- [Radar Tracker: Moving Instance Tracking in Sparse and Noisy Radar Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.03441/) (2025)
- [SemRaFiner: Panoptic Segmentation in Sparse and Noisy Radar Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.06906/) (2025)
- [Redefining Radar Segmentation: Simultaneous Static-Moving Segmentation and Ego-Motion Estimation using Radar Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20003/) (2025)
- [BEVMOSNet: Multimodal Fusion for BEV Moving Object Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.03280/) (2025)
- [Self-Supervised Moving Object Segmentation of Sparse and Noisy Radar Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.02395/) (2025)
- [DIMOS: Disentangling Instance-level Moving Object Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.12826/) (2026)
- [4D Radar Perception Algorithms for Autonomous Driving: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.19216/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

The perception of moving objects is crucial for autonomous robots performing collision avoidance in dynamic environments. LiDARs and cameras tremendously enhance scene interpretation but do not provide direct motion information and face limitations under adverse weather. Radar sensors overcome these limitations and provide Doppler velocities, delivering direct information on dynamic objects. In this paper, we address the problem of moving instance segmentation in radar point clouds to enhance scene interpretation for safety-critical tasks. Our Radar Instance Transformer enriches the current radar scan with temporal information without passing aggregated scans through a neural network. We propose a full-resolution backbone to prevent information loss in sparse point cloud processing. Our instance transformer head incorporates essential information to enhance segmentation but also enables reliable, class-agnostic instance assignments. In sum, our approach shows superior performance on the new moving instance segmentation benchmarks, including diverse environments, and provides model-agnostic modules to enhance scene interpretation. The benchmark is based on the RadarScenes dataset and will be made available upon acceptance.