# Semi-Supervised 3D Object Detection with Channel Augmentation using Transformation Equivariance

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.06583 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.06583/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 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 22 of its 27 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Sep 2024.

## Placed in

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

## Builds on (most cited first, 22 of 22)

- [RandAugment: Practical automated data augmentation with a reduced search space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.13719/) (2019)
- [FixMatch: Simplifying Semi-Supervised Learning with Consistency and Confidence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2001.07685/) (2020)
- [Improved Regularization of Convolutional Neural Networks with Cutout](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.04552/) (2017)
- [MixMatch: A Holistic Approach to Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.02249/) (2019)
- [Big Self-Supervised Models are Strong Semi-Supervised Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.10029/) (2020)
- [Self-training with Noisy Student improves ImageNet classification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.04252/) (2019)
- [Unsupervised Data Augmentation for Consistency Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.12848/) (2019)
- [Temporal Ensembling for Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1610.02242/) (2016)
- [Virtual Adversarial Training: A Regularization Method for Supervised and Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1704.03976/) (2017)
- [PV-RCNN: Point-Voxel Feature Set Abstraction for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.13192/) (2019)
- [Regularization With Stochastic Transformations and Perturbations for Deep Semi-Supervised Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.04586/) (2016)
- [Voxel R-CNN: Towards High Performance Voxel-based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15712/) (2020)
- [End-to-End Semi-Supervised Object Detection with Soft Teacher](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.09018/) (2021)
- [A Simple Semi-Supervised Learning Framework for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.04757/) (2020)
- [Semi-Supervised Learning with Ladder Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1507.02672/) (2015)
- [SESS: Self-Ensembling Semi-Supervised 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.11803/) (2019)
- [3DIoUMatch: Leveraging IoU Prediction for Semi-Supervised 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.04355/) (2020)
- [Transformation-Equivariant 3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.11962/) (2022)
- [Semi-supervised 3D Object Detection with Proficient Teachers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.12655/) (2022)
- [DetMatch: Two Teachers are Better Than One for Joint 2D and 3D Semi-Supervised Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.09510/) (2022)
- [DDS3D: Dense Pseudo-Labels with Dynamic Threshold for Semi-Supervised 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05079/) (2023)
- [Semi-Supervised Object Detection with Object-wise Contrastive Learning and Regression Uncertainty](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.02747/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Learning Adaptive Pseudo-Label Selection for Semi-Supervised 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.23880/) (2025)
- [Generalist Multi-Class Anomaly Detection via Distillation to Two Heterogeneous Student Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.24448/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Accurate 3D object detection is crucial for autonomous vehicles and robots to navigate and interact with the environment safely and effectively. Meanwhile, the performance of 3D detector relies on the data size and annotation which is expensive. Consequently, the demand of training with limited labeled data is growing. We explore a novel teacher-student framework employing channel augmentation for 3D semi-supervised object detection. The teacher-student SSL typically adopts a weak augmentation and strong augmentation to teacher and student, respectively. In this work, we apply multiple channel augmentations to both networks using the transformation equivariance detector (TED). The TED allows us to explore different combinations of augmentation on point clouds and efficiently aggregates multi-channel transformation equivariance features. In principle, by adopting fixed channel augmentations for the teacher network, the student can train stably on reliable pseudo-labels. Adopting strong channel augmentations can enrich the diversity of data, fostering robustness to transformations and enhancing generalization performance of the student network. We use SOTA hierarchical supervision as a baseline and adapt its dual-threshold to TED, which is called channel IoU consistency. We evaluate our method with KITTI dataset, and achieved a significant performance leap, surpassing SOTA 3D semi-supervised object detection models.