# Towards Long-Range 3D Object Detection for Autonomous Vehicles

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.04800 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.04800/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 28 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 7 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Mask R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.06870/) (2017)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Fast R-CNN](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1504.08083/) (2015)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [Center-based 3D Object Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11275/) (2020)
- [Argoverse 2: Next Generation Datasets for Self-Driving Perception and Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00493/) (2023)
- [Hybrid Task Cascade for Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1901.07518/) (2019)
- [PointPainting: Sequential Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10150/) (2019)
- [Class-balanced Grouping and Sampling for Point Cloud 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09492/) (2019)
- [Submanifold Sparse Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.01307/) (2017)
- [VoxelNeXt: Fully Sparse VoxelNet for 3D Object Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11301/) (2023)
- [Multimodal Virtual Point 3D Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.06881/) (2021)
- [On a Formal Model of Safe and Scalable Self-driving Cars](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.06374/) (2017)
- [Not All Points Are Equal: Learning Highly Efficient Point-based Detectors for 3D LiDAR Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11139/) (2022)
- [ImVoteNet: Boosting 3D Object Detection in Point Clouds with Image Votes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.10692/) (2020)
- [Deep Depth Completion of a Single RGB-D Image](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.09326/) (2018)
- [In Defense of Classical Image Processing: Fast Depth Completion on the CPU](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.00036/) (2018)
- [FusionPainting: Multimodal Fusion with Adaptive Attention for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12449/) (2021)
- [Fully Sparse 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10035/) (2022)
- [Zenseact Open Dataset: A large-scale and diverse multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.02008/) (2023)
- [Far3D: Expanding the Horizon for Surround-view 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09616/) (2023)
- [A Survey on Deep Domain Adaptation for LiDAR Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.02377/) (2021)
- [FSD V2: Improving Fully Sparse 3D Object Detection with Virtual Voxels](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.03755/) (2023)
- [aiMotive Dataset: A Multimodal Dataset for Robust Autonomous Driving with Long-Range Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09445/) (2022)
- [Fully Sparse Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12310/) (2023)
- [Faraway-Frustum: Dealing with Lidar Sparsity for 3D Object Detection using Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.01404/) (2020)
- [An Empirical Analysis of Range for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04054/) (2023)
- [Far3Det: Towards Far-Field 3D Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.13858/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Delving into Multi-modal Multi-task Foundation Models for Road Scene Understanding: From Learning Paradigm Perspectives](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.02968/) (2024)
- [DoGFlow: Self-Supervised LiDAR Scene Flow via Cross-Modal Doppler Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.18506/) (2025)
- [Long-Range depth estimation using learning based Hybrid Distortion Model for CCTV cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.17784/) (2025)
- [SimPB++: Simultaneously Detecting 2D and 3D Objects from Multiple Cameras](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.01924/) (2026)
- [ATN3D: Density-Aware LiDAR-Radar Early 3D Object Detection Under Extreme Sparsity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09634/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D object detection at long range is crucial for ensuring the safety and efficiency of self driving vehicles, allowing them to accurately perceive and react to objects, obstacles, and potential hazards from a distance. But most current state of the art LiDAR based methods are range limited due to sparsity at long range, which generates a form of domain gap between points closer to and farther away from the ego vehicle. Another related problem is the label imbalance for faraway objects, which inhibits the performance of Deep Neural Networks at long range. To address the above limitations, we investigate two ways to improve long range performance of current LiDAR based 3D detectors. First, we combine two 3D detection networks, referred to as range experts, one specializing at near to mid range objects, and one at long range 3D detection. To train a detector at long range under a scarce label regime, we further weigh the loss according to the labelled point's distance from ego vehicle. Second, we augment LiDAR scans with virtual points generated using Multimodal Virtual Points (MVP), a readily available image-based depth completion algorithm. Our experiments on the long range Argoverse2 (AV2) dataset indicate that MVP is more effective in improving long range performance, while maintaining a straightforward implementation. On the other hand, the range experts offer a computationally efficient and simpler alternative, avoiding dependency on image-based segmentation networks and perfect camera-LiDAR calibration.