# CRKD: Enhanced Camera-Radar Object Detection with Cross-modality Knowledge Distillation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.19104 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.19104/

## Key facts

- Cited by 28 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Detection and dense prediction distillation, one of 12 directions in Knowledge distillation.
- Builds on 56 of its 72 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Mar 2024.

## Placed in

- Knowledge distillation / [Detection and dense prediction distillation](https://mlsanity.com/distill/detection-and-dense-prediction-distillation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 56)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [Distilling the Knowledge in a Neural Network](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1503.02531/) (2015)
- [SGDR: Stochastic Gradient Descent with Warm Restarts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1608.03983/) (2016)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [PointPillars: Fast Encoders for Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05784/) (2018)
- [BEVFormer: Learning Bird's-Eye-View Representation from Multi-Camera Images via Spatiotemporal Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17270/) (2022)
- [Center-based 3D Object Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11275/) (2020)
- [Planning-oriented Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10156/) (2022)
- [BEVFusion: Multi-Task Multi-Sensor Fusion with Unified Bird's-Eye View Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13542/) (2022)
- [BEVDet: High-performance Multi-camera 3D Object Detection in Bird-Eye-View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11790/) (2021)
- [BEVDepth: Acquisition of Reliable Depth for Multi-view 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.10092/) (2022)
- [TransFusion: Robust LiDAR-Camera Fusion for 3D Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11496/) (2022)
- [PointPainting: Sequential Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.10150/) (2019)
- [Generalized Focal Loss: Learning Qualified and Distributed Bounding Boxes for Dense Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.04388/) (2020)
- [Class-balanced Grouping and Sampling for Point Cloud 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.09492/) (2019)
- [BEVDet4D: Exploit Temporal Cues in Multi-camera 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17054/) (2022)
- [BEVFusion: A Simple and Robust LiDAR-Camera Fusion Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13790/) (2022)
- [FUTR3D: A Unified Sensor Fusion Framework for 3D Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10642/) (2022)
- [3D-CVF: Generating Joint Camera and LiDAR Features Using Cross-View Spatial Feature Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.12636/) (2020)
- [MVX-Net: Multimodal VoxelNet for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.01649/) (2019)
- [CenterFusion: Center-based Radar and Camera Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.04841/) (2020)
- [CLOCs: Camera-LiDAR Object Candidates Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.00784/) (2020)
- [Image-to-Lidar Self-Supervised Distillation for Autonomous Driving Data](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.16258/) (2022)
- [DeepInteraction: 3D Object Detection via Modality Interaction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.11112/) (2022)
- [FusionPainting: Multimodal Fusion with Adaptive Attention for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.12449/) (2021)
- [CRN: Camera Radar Net for Accurate, Robust, Efficient 3D Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.00670/) (2023)
- [LIGA-Stereo: Learning LiDAR Geometry Aware Representations for Stereo-based 3D Detector](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08258/) (2021)
- [MonoDistill: Learning Spatial Features for Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.10830/) (2022)
- [CRAFT: Camera-Radar 3D Object Detection with Spatio-Contextual Fusion Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.06535/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 28 of 28)

- [Multimodal Fusion and Vision-Language Models: A Survey for Robot Vision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.02477/) (2025)
- [LiCROcc: Teach Radar for Accurate Semantic Occupancy Prediction using LiDAR and Camera](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.16197/) (2024)
- [CRT-Fusion: Camera, Radar, Temporal Fusion Using Motion Information for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.03013/) (2024)
- [RadarSplat: Radar Gaussian Splatting for High-Fidelity Data Synthesis and 3D Reconstruction of Autonomous Driving Scenes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.01379/) (2025)
- [MemFusionMap: Working Memory Fusion for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18737/) (2024)
- [Radar and Camera Fusion for Object Detection and Tracking: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19872/) (2024)
- [SpaRC: Sparse Radar-Camera Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.19860/) (2024)
- [UniBEVFusion: Unified Radar-Vision BEVFusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.14751/) (2024)
- [LiRCDepth: Lightweight Radar-Camera Depth Estimation via Knowledge Distillation and Uncertainty Guidance](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.16380/) (2024)
- [Resource-Efficient Beam Prediction in mmWave Communications with Multimodal Realistic Simulation Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.05187/) (2025)
- [Distilling Cross-Modal Knowledge via Feature Disentanglement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.19887/) (2025)
- [Integrating Multi-Modal Sensors: A Review of Fusion Techniques for Intelligent Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.21885/) (2025)
- [RCTDistill: Cross-Modal Knowledge Distillation Framework for Radar-Camera 3D Object Detection with Temporal Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.17712/) (2025)
- [RISE: Single Static Radar-based Indoor Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.14019/) (2025)
- [KD360-VoxelBEV: LiDAR and 360-degree Camera Cross Modality Knowledge Distillation for Bird's-Eye-View Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15311/) (2025)
- [Enhanced 3D Object Detection via Diverse Feature Representations of 4D Radar Tensor](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.06114/) (2025)
- [MolSight: Molecular Property Prediction with Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.10157/) (2026)
- [Information-Theoretic Criteria for Knowledge Distillation in Multimodal Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.13182/) (2025)
- [PEFT-DML: Parameter-Efficient Fine-Tuning Deep Metric Learning for Robust Multi-Modal 3D Object Detection in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.00060/) (2025)
- [IMKD: Intensity-Aware Multi-Level Knowledge Distillation for Camera-Radar Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.15581/) (2025)
- [SkeFi: Cross-Modal Knowledge Transfer for Wireless Skeleton-Based Action Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.12432/) (2026)
- [CD-FKD: Cross-Domain Feature Knowledge Distillation for Robust Single-Domain Generalization in Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16439/) (2026)
- [CLLAP: Contrastive Learning-based LiDAR-Augmented Pretraining for Enhanced Radar-Camera Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.24044/) (2026)
- [Control Your Queries: Heterogeneous Query Interaction for Camera-Radar Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25574/) (2026)
- [CRISP: A Spatiotemporal Camera-Radar Backbone for Driving via Forecasting-Based World-Model Pretraining](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.04541/) (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)
- [RLG-TPV: Radar- and LiDAR-Guided Tri-Perspective View Fusion for Camera-Radar 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.29194/) (2026)
- [Adversarial Robustness of Camera-Radar Sensor Fusion for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2610.16012/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In the field of 3D object detection for autonomous driving, LiDAR-Camera (LC) fusion is the top-performing sensor configuration. Still, LiDAR is relatively high cost, which hinders adoption of this technology for consumer automobiles. Alternatively, camera and radar are commonly deployed on vehicles already on the road today, but performance of Camera-Radar (CR) fusion falls behind LC fusion. In this work, we propose Camera-Radar Knowledge Distillation (CRKD) to bridge the performance gap between LC and CR detectors with a novel cross-modality KD framework. We use the Bird's-Eye-View (BEV) representation as the shared feature space to enable effective knowledge distillation. To accommodate the unique cross-modality KD path, we propose four distillation losses to help the student learn crucial features from the teacher model. We present extensive evaluations on the nuScenes dataset to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed CRKD framework. The project page for CRKD is https://song-jingyu.github.io/CRKD.