# 3D Learnable Supertoken Transformer for LiDAR Point Cloud Scene Segmentation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.15826 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.15826/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 26 of its 48 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 May 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 26 of 26)

- [An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scale](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11929/) (2020)
- [Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.14030/) (2021)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Categorical Reparameterization with Gumbel-Softmax](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.01144/) (2016)
- [Dynamic Graph CNN for Learning on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07829/) (2018)
- [KPConv: Flexible and Deformable Convolution for Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08889/) (2019)
- [PointCNN: Convolution On X-Transformed Points](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.07791/) (2018)
- [PCT: Point cloud transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09688/) (2020)
- [Large-scale Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation with Superpoint Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.09869/) (2017)
- [Relation-Shape Convolutional Neural Network for Point Cloud Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07601/) (2019)
- [Point-Voxel CNN for Efficient 3D Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1907.03739/) (2019)
- [DSVT: Dynamic Sparse Voxel Transformer with Rotated Sets](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06051/) (2023)
- [Superpoint Transformer for 3D Scene Instance Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15766/) (2022)
- [ShellNet: Efficient Point Cloud Convolutional Neural Networks using Concentric Shells Statistics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.06295/) (2019)
- [Toronto-3D: A Large-scale Mobile LiDAR Dataset for Semantic Segmentation of Urban Roadways](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.08284/) (2020)
- [Efficient Transformers with Dynamic Token Pooling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09761/) (2022)
- [FlatFormer: Flattened Window Attention for Efficient Point Cloud Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.08739/) (2023)
- [DeepGCNs: Making GCNs Go as Deep as CNNs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.06849/) (2019)
- [DALES: A Large-scale Aerial LiDAR Data Set for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11985/) (2020)
- [ConvPoint: Continuous Convolutions for Point Cloud Processing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.02375/) (2019)
- [Adaptive Graph Convolution for Point Cloud Analysis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.08035/) (2021)
- [Efficient 3D Semantic Segmentation with Superpoint Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08045/) (2023)
- [PatchFormer: An Efficient Point Transformer with Patch Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00207/) (2021)
- [Centroid Transformers: Learning to Abstract with Attention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.08606/) (2021)
- [Dynamic Clustering Transformer Network for Point Cloud Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.08073/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Foundry: Distilling 3D Foundation Models for the Edge](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.20721/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D Transformers have achieved great success in point cloud understanding and representation. However, there is still considerable scope for further development in effective and efficient Transformers for large-scale LiDAR point cloud scene segmentation. This paper proposes a novel 3D Transformer framework, named 3D Learnable Supertoken Transformer (3DLST). The key contributions are summarized as follows. Firstly, we introduce the first Dynamic Supertoken Optimization (DSO) block for efficient token clustering and aggregating, where the learnable supertoken definition avoids the time-consuming pre-processing of traditional superpoint generation. Since the learnable supertokens can be dynamically optimized by multi-level deep features during network learning, they are tailored to the semantic homogeneity-aware token clustering. Secondly, an efficient Cross-Attention-guided Upsampling (CAU) block is proposed for token reconstruction from optimized supertokens. Thirdly, the 3DLST is equipped with a novel W-net architecture instead of the common U-net design, which is more suitable for Transformer-based feature learning. The SOTA performance on three challenging LiDAR datasets (airborne MultiSpectral LiDAR (MS-LiDAR) (89.3% of the average F1 score), DALES (80.2% of mIoU), and Toronto-3D dataset (80.4% of mIoU)) demonstrate the superiority of 3DLST and its strong adaptability to various LiDAR point cloud data (airborne MS-LiDAR, aerial LiDAR, and vehicle-mounted LiDAR data). Furthermore, 3DLST also achieves satisfactory results in terms of algorithm efficiency, which is up to 5x faster than previous best-performing methods.