# JDT3D: Addressing the Gaps in LiDAR-Based Tracking-by-Attention

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.04926 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.04926/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 27 of its 33 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 Jul 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 27 of 27)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Deformable DETR: Deformable Transformers for End-to-End Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04159/) (2020)
- [VoxelNet: End-to-End Learning for Point Cloud Based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06396/) (2017)
- [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)
- [CornerNet: Detecting Objects as Paired Keypoints](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1808.01244/) (2018)
- [TrackFormer: Multi-Object Tracking with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.02702/) (2021)
- [TransFusion: Robust LiDAR-Camera Fusion for 3D Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11496/) (2022)
- [MOTR: End-to-End Multiple-Object Tracking with Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.03247/) (2021)
- [TransTrack: Multiple Object Tracking with Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15460/) (2020)
- [MOTRv2: Bootstrapping End-to-End Multi-Object Tracking by Pretrained Object Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.09791/) (2022)
- [SimpleTrack: Understanding and Rethinking 3D Multi-object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09621/) (2021)
- [MUTR3D: A Multi-camera Tracking Framework via 3D-to-2D Queries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.00613/) (2022)
- [Probabilistic 3D Multi-Object Tracking for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.05673/) (2020)
- [FocalFormer3D : Focusing on Hard Instance for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04556/) (2023)
- [Exploring Simple 3D Multi-Object Tracking for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.10312/) (2021)
- [Standing Between Past and Future: Spatio-Temporal Modeling for Multi-Camera 3D Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03802/) (2023)
- [CAMO-MOT: Combined Appearance-Motion Optimization for 3D Multi-Object Tracking with Camera-LiDAR Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.02540/) (2022)
- [Poly-MOT: A Polyhedral Framework For 3D Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.16675/) (2023)
- [MotionTrack: End-to-End Transformer-based Multi-Object Tracing with LiDAR-Camera Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17000/) (2023)
- [Quantifying Data Augmentation for LiDAR based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.01643/) (2020)
- [Dense Voxel Fusion for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.00871/) (2022)
- [Video Task Decathlon: Unifying Image and Video Tasks in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04422/) (2023)
- [Joint 3D Object Detection and Tracking Using Spatio-Temporal Representation of Camera Image and LiDAR Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.07116/) (2021)

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

- [CoopTrack: Exploring End-to-End Learning for Efficient Cooperative Sequential Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.19239/) (2025)
- [ForeSight: Multi-View Streaming Joint Object Detection and Trajectory Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.07089/) (2025)
- [SCATR: Mitigating New Instance Suppression in LiDAR-based Tracking-by-Attention via Second Chance Assignment and Track Query Dropout](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.01485/) (2026)
- [To New Beginnings: A Survey of Unified Perception in Autonomous Vehicle Software](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.20892/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Tracking-by-detection (TBD) methods achieve state-of-the-art performance on 3D tracking benchmarks for autonomous driving. On the other hand, tracking-by-attention (TBA) methods have the potential to outperform TBD methods, particularly for long occlusions and challenging detection settings. This work investigates why TBA methods continue to lag in performance behind TBD methods using a LiDAR-based joint detector and tracker called JDT3D. Based on this analysis, we propose two generalizable methods to bridge the gap between TBD and TBA methods: track sampling augmentation and confidence-based query propagation. JDT3D is trained and evaluated on the nuScenes dataset, achieving 0.574 on the AMOTA metric on the nuScenes test set, outperforming all existing LiDAR-based TBA approaches by over 6%. Based on our results, we further discuss some potential challenges with the existing TBA model formulation to explain the continued gap in performance with TBD methods. The implementation of JDT3D can be found at the following link: https://github.com/TRAILab/JDT3D.