# Pedestrian Detection in Low-Light Conditions: A Comprehensive Survey

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.07801 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.07801/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 53 of its 203 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 15 Jan 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 53)

- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [Faster R-CNN: Towards Real-Time Object Detection with Region Proposal Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.01497/) (2015)
- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [You Only Look Once: Unified, Real-Time Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02640/) (2015)
- [SSD: Single Shot MultiBox Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.02325/) (2015)
- [YOLOv3: An Incremental Improvement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.02767/) (2018)
- [Searching for MobileNetV3](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02244/) (2019)
- [YOLOv4: Optimal Speed and Accuracy of Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10934/) (2020)
- [YOLO9000: Better, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.08242/) (2016)
- [YOLOv7: Trainable bag-of-freebies sets new state-of-the-art for real-time object detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.02696/) (2022)
- [Distance-IoU Loss: Faster and Better Learning for Bounding Box Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.08287/) (2019)
- [R-FCN: Object Detection via Region-based Fully Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.06409/) (2016)
- [Multi-Task Learning with Deep Neural Networks: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.09796/) (2020)
- [LLVIP: A Visible-infrared Paired Dataset for Low-light Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10831/) (2021)
- [DenseFuse: A Fusion Approach to Infrared and Visible Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.08361/) (2018)
- [CityPersons: A Diverse Dataset for Pedestrian Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.05693/) (2017)
- [DDFM: Denoising Diffusion Model for Multi-Modality Image Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.06840/) (2023)
- [Imbalance Problems in Object Detection: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.00169/) (2019)
- [Image-to-Image Translation: Methods and Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.08629/) (2021)
- [Cross-Modality Fusion Transformer for Multispectral Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00273/) (2021)
- [Multispectral Fusion for Object Detection with Cyclic Fuse-and-Refine Blocks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.12664/) (2020)
- [Improving Multispectral Pedestrian Detection by Addressing Modality Imbalance Problems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.03043/) (2020)
- [Inside-Outside Net: Detecting Objects in Context with Skip Pooling and Recurrent Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.04143/) (2015)
- [Illumination-aware Faster R-CNN for Robust Multispectral Pedestrian Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05347/) (2018)
- [Multimodal Object Detection via Probabilistic Ensembling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02904/) (2021)
- [Wide Activation for Efficient and Accurate Image Super-Resolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.08718/) (2018)
- [Fusion of Multispectral Data Through Illumination-aware Deep Neural Networks for Pedestrian Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09972/) (2018)
- [Dif-Fusion: Towards High Color Fidelity in Infrared and Visible Image Fusion with Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.08072/) (2023)
- [Multispectral Pedestrian Detection via Simultaneous Detection and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.04818/) (2018)

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [R-LiViT: A LiDAR-Visual-Thermal Dataset Enabling Vulnerable Road User Focused Roadside Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.17122/) (2025)
- [Optimizing Multispectral Object Detection: A Bag of Tricks and Comprehensive Benchmarks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.18288/) (2024)
- [Real-time Deer Detection and Warning in Connected Vehicles via Thermal Sensing and Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.18779/) (2025)
- [From Camera-Based Sensing to Reasoning: A Comprehensive Review Toward Proactive Vulnerable Road User Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03314/) (2025)
- [A Study on Real-time Object Detection using Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.15926/) (2026)
- [Camo-M3FD: A New Benchmark Dataset for Cross-Spectral Camouflaged Pedestrian Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.16582/) (2026)
- [IAF-Net: Illumination-Adaptive Fusion for Low-Light Urban Road Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.30939/) (2026)
- [DarkVGGT: Seeing Through Darkness Using Thermal Geometry](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.11326/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Pedestrian detection remains a critical problem in various domains, such as computer vision, surveillance, and autonomous driving. In particular, accurate and instant detection of pedestrians in low-light conditions and reduced visibility is of utmost importance for autonomous vehicles to prevent accidents and save lives. This paper aims to comprehensively survey various pedestrian detection approaches, baselines, and datasets that specifically target low-light conditions. The survey discusses the challenges faced in detecting pedestrians at night and explores state-of-the-art methodologies proposed in recent years to address this issue. These methodologies encompass a diverse range, including deep learning-based, feature-based, and hybrid approaches, which have shown promising results in enhancing pedestrian detection performance under challenging lighting conditions. Furthermore, the paper highlights current research directions in the field and identifies potential solutions that merit further investigation by researchers. By thoroughly examining pedestrian detection techniques in low-light conditions, this survey seeks to contribute to the advancement of safer and more reliable autonomous driving systems and other applications related to pedestrian safety. Accordingly, most of the current approaches in the field use deep learning-based image fusion methodologies (i.e., early, halfway, and late fusion) for accurate and reliable pedestrian detection. Moreover, the majority of the works in the field (approximately 48%) have been evaluated on the KAIST dataset, while the real-world video feeds recorded by authors have been used in less than six percent of the works.