# SparseLIF: High-Performance Sparse LiDAR-Camera Fusion for 3D Object Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.07284 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.07284/

## Key facts

- Cited by 25 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 80 of its 83 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 Mar 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 80)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [Feature Pyramid Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.03144/) (2016)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Deformable DETR: Deformable Transformers for End-to-End Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04159/) (2020)
- [PointPillars: Fast Encoders for Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05784/) (2018)
- [FCOS: Fully Convolutional One-Stage Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01355/) (2019)
- [VoxelNet: End-to-End Learning for Point Cloud Based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06396/) (2017)
- [BEVFormer: Learning Bird's-Eye-View Representation from Multi-Camera Images via Spatiotemporal Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17270/) (2022)
- [Objects as Points](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07850/) (2019)
- [Center-based 3D Object Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11275/) (2020)
- [Lift, Splat, Shoot: Encoding Images From Arbitrary Camera Rigs by Implicitly Unprojecting to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05711/) (2020)
- [PointRCNN: 3D Object Proposal Generation and Detection from Point Cloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04244/) (2018)
- [PV-RCNN: Point-Voxel Feature Set Abstraction for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.13192/) (2019)
- [BEVFusion: Multi-Task Multi-Sensor Fusion with Unified Bird's-Eye View Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13542/) (2022)
- [Multi-View 3D Object Detection Network for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07759/) (2016)
- [BEVDet: High-performance Multi-camera 3D Object Detection in Bird-Eye-View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11790/) (2021)
- [DETR3D: 3D Object Detection from Multi-view Images via 3D-to-2D Queries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06922/) (2021)
- [Frustum PointNets for 3D Object Detection from RGB-D Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.08488/) (2017)
- [BEVDepth: Acquisition of Reliable Depth for Multi-view 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10092/) (2022)
- [PETR: Position Embedding Transformation for Multi-View 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.05625/) (2022)
- [DN-DETR: Accelerate DETR Training by Introducing Query DeNoising](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.01305/) (2022)
- [TransFusion: Robust LiDAR-Camera Fusion for 3D Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11496/) (2022)
- [Pseudo-LiDAR from Visual Depth Estimation: Bridging the Gap in 3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07179/) (2018)
- [PointPainting: Sequential Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10150/) (2019)
- [FCOS3D: Fully Convolutional One-Stage Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.10956/) (2021)
- [3DSSD: Point-based 3D Single Stage Object Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.10187/) (2020)
- [Voxel R-CNN: Towards High Performance Voxel-based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15712/) (2020)

## Built on by (most cited first, 25 of 25)

- [Multimodal Fusion and Vision-Language Models: A Survey for Robot Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02477/) (2025)
- [Perspective-Invariant 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.17665/) (2025)
- [Vulnerable Road User Detection and Safety Enhancement: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.19202/) (2024)
- [NegoCollab: A Common Representation Negotiation Approach for Heterogeneous Collaborative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.27647/) (2025)
- [MoRAL: Motion-aware Multi-Frame 4D Radar and LiDAR Fusion for Robust 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.09422/) (2025)
- [SAM4D: Segment Anything in Camera and LiDAR Streams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.21547/) (2025)
- [MambaFusion: Height-Fidelity Dense Global Fusion for Multi-modal 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.04369/) (2025)
- [EVT: Efficient View Transformation for Multi-Modal 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.10715/) (2024)
- [All You Need for Object Detection: From Pixels, Points, and Prompts to Next-Gen Fusion and Multimodal LLMs/VLMs in Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.26641/) (2025)
- [nuScenes Revisited: Progress and Challenges in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.02448/) (2025)
- [MonoDETRNext: Next-Generation Accurate and Efficient Monocular 3D Object Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15176/) (2024)
- [RG-Attn: Radian Glue Attention for Multi-modality Multi-agent Cooperative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.16803/) (2025)
- [DepthFusion: Depth-Aware Hybrid Feature Fusion for LiDAR-Camera 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07398/) (2025)
- [Dual-Domain Homogeneous Fusion with Cross-Modal Mamba and Progressive Decoder for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.08992/) (2025)
- [Self-Supervised Pre-training with Combined Datasets for 3D Perception in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.12709/) (2025)
- [An Efficient LiDAR-Camera Fusion Network for Multi-Class 3D Dynamic Object Detection and Trajectory Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.13647/) (2025)
- [ALIGN: Advanced Query Initialization with LiDAR-Image Guidance for Occlusion-Robust 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.18187/) (2025)
- [ModalPatch: A Plug-and-Play Module for Robust Multi-Modal 3D Object Detection under Modality Drop](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.02481/) (2026)
- [Fusion4CA: Boosting 3D Object Detection via Comprehensive Image Exploitation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.05305/) (2026)
- [Control Your Queries: Heterogeneous Query Interaction for Camera-Radar Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25574/) (2026)
- [Hyperbolic Distillation: Geometry-Guided Cross-Modal Transfer for Robust 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.09899/) (2026)
- [CAMF-Det: Closure-Aware Multimodal Fusion for LiDAR-Camera 3D Object Detection on UAV Platforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.09143/) (2026)
- [Horizon3D: Sparse Radar-Camera Fusion for Long-Range 3D Perception in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31096/) (2026)
- [GaussianFusion: Unified 3D Gaussian Representation for Multi-Modal Fusion Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.00746/) (2026)
- [RAF: Reliability-Aware Fusion of Camera, LiDAR, and 4D RADAR for Robust 3D Object Detection in Adverse Weather](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04587/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Sparse 3D detectors have received significant attention since the query-based paradigm embraces low latency without explicit dense BEV feature construction. However, these detectors achieve worse performance than their dense counterparts. In this paper, we find the key to bridging the performance gap is to enhance the awareness of rich representations in two modalities. Here, we present a high-performance fully sparse detector for end-to-end multi-modality 3D object detection. The detector, termed SparseLIF, contains three key designs, which are (1) Perspective-Aware Query Generation (PAQG) to generate high-quality 3D queries with perspective priors, (2) RoI-Aware Sampling (RIAS) to further refine prior queries by sampling RoI features from each modality, (3) Uncertainty-Aware Fusion (UAF) to precisely quantify the uncertainty of each sensor modality and adaptively conduct final multi-modality fusion, thus achieving great robustness against sensor noises. By the time of paper submission, SparseLIF achieves state-of-the-art performance on the nuScenes dataset, ranking 1st on both validation set and test benchmark, outperforming all state-of-the-art 3D object detectors by a notable margin.