# Navigating Data Heterogeneity in Federated Learning A Semi-Supervised Federated Object Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.17097 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.17097/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 35 of its 43 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 26 Oct 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 35)

- [Communication-Efficient Learning of Deep Networks from Decentralized Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05629/) (2016)
- [The Cityscapes Dataset for Semantic Urban Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1604.01685/) (2016)
- [Advances and Open Problems in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04977/) (2019)
- [Federated Optimization in Heterogeneous Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.06127/) (2018)
- [BDD100K: A Diverse Driving Dataset for Heterogeneous Multitask Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04687/) (2018)
- [On the Convergence of FedAvg on Non-IID Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.02189/) (2019)
- [Adaptive Federated Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00295/) (2020)
- [Ensemble Distillation for Robust Model Fusion in Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.07242/) (2020)
- [FedBN: Federated Learning on Non-IID Features via Local Batch Normalization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.07623/) (2021)
- [Federated Learning Based on Dynamic Regularization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.04263/) (2021)
- [Agnostic Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.00146/) (2019)
- [FedPAQ: A Communication-Efficient Federated Learning Method with Periodic Averaging and Quantization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13014/) (2019)
- [End-to-End Semi-Supervised Object Detection with Soft Teacher](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09018/) (2021)
- [Personalized Federated Learning: A Meta-Learning Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.07948/) (2020)
- [Unbiased Teacher for Semi-Supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.09480/) (2021)
- [A Simple Semi-Supervised Learning Framework for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04757/) (2020)
- [Federated Learning for Smart Healthcare: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.08834/) (2021)
- [SCAFFOLD: Stochastic Controlled Averaging for Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.06378/) (2019)
- [Federated Semi-Supervised Learning with Inter-Client Consistency & Disjoint Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.12097/) (2020)
- [Personalized Federated Learning with Feature Alignment and Classifier Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.11867/) (2023)
- [Self-Domain Adaptation for Face Anti-Spoofing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.12129/) (2021)
- [SemiFL: Semi-Supervised Federated Learning for Unlabeled Clients with Alternate Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.01432/) (2021)
- [Orthogonal Projection Loss](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14021/) (2021)
- [SODA10M: A Large-Scale 2D Self/Semi-Supervised Object Detection Dataset for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11118/) (2021)
- [Towards Utilizing Unlabeled Data in Federated Learning: A Survey and Prospective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.11545/) (2020)
- [SSDA-YOLO: Semi-supervised Domain Adaptive YOLO for Cross-Domain Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.02213/) (2022)
- [Efficient Teacher: Semi-Supervised Object Detection for YOLOv5](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07577/) (2023)
- [FedCD: Improving Performance in non-IID Federated Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.09637/) (2020)
- [Federated Learning without Full Labels: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.14453/) (2023)
- [Federated Semi-Supervised Learning with Prototypical Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13921/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Handling Spatial-Temporal Data Heterogeneity for Federated Continual Learning via Tail Anchor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.18355/) (2024)
- [SAFE: Self-Adjustment Federated Learning Framework for Remote Sensing Collaborative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.03700/) (2025)
- [ProxyFL: A Proxy-Guided Framework for Federated Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.21078/) (2026)
- [Federated Learning of Spiking Neural Networks under Heterogeneous Temporal Resolutions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.15355/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a potent framework for training models across distributed data sources while maintaining data privacy. Nevertheless, it faces challenges with limited high-quality labels and non-IID client data, particularly in applications like autonomous driving. To address these hurdles, we navigate the uncharted waters of Semi-Supervised Federated Object Detection (SSFOD). We present a pioneering SSFOD framework, designed for scenarios where labeled data reside only at the server while clients possess unlabeled data. Notably, our method represents the inaugural implementation of SSFOD for clients with 0% labeled non-IID data, a stark contrast to previous studies that maintain some subset of labels at each client. We propose FedSTO, a two-stage strategy encompassing Selective Training followed by Orthogonally enhanced full-parameter training, to effectively address data shift (e.g. weather conditions) between server and clients. Our contributions include selectively refining the backbone of the detector to avert overfitting, orthogonality regularization to boost representation divergence, and local EMA-driven pseudo label assignment to yield high-quality pseudo labels. Extensive validation on prominent autonomous driving datasets (BDD100K, Cityscapes, and SODA10M) attests to the efficacy of our approach, demonstrating state-of-the-art results. Remarkably, FedSTO, using just 20-30% of labels, performs nearly as well as fully-supervised centralized training methods.