# SparseAlign: A Fully Sparse Framework for Cooperative Object Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.12982 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.12982/

## Key facts

- Cited by 15 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 37 of its 45 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 17 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 37)

- [CARLA: An Open Urban Driving Simulator](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.03938/) (2017)
- [PointPillars: Fast Encoders for Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.05784/) (2018)
- [VoxelNet: End-to-End Learning for Point Cloud Based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.06396/) (2017)
- [4D Spatio-Temporal ConvNets: Minkowski Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08755/) (2019)
- [PV-RCNN: Point-Voxel Feature Set Abstraction for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.13192/) (2019)
- [PIXOR: Real-time 3D Object Detection from Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06326/) (2019)
- [V2X-ViT: Vehicle-to-Everything Cooperative Perception with Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10638/) (2022)
- [Exploring Object-Centric Temporal Modeling for Efficient Multi-View 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11926/) (2023)
- [OPV2V: An Open Benchmark Dataset and Fusion Pipeline for Perception with Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07644/) (2021)
- [V2VNet: Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication for Joint Perception and Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.07519/) (2020)
- [DAIR-V2X: A Large-Scale Dataset for Vehicle-Infrastructure Cooperative 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05575/) (2022)
- [Where2comm: Communication-Efficient Collaborative Perception via Spatial Confidence Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.12836/) (2022)
- [CoBEVT: Cooperative Bird's Eye View Semantic Segmentation with Sparse Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.02202/) (2022)
- [VoxelNeXt: Fully Sparse VoxelNet for 3D Object Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11301/) (2023)
- [F-Cooper: Feature based Cooperative Perception for Autonomous Vehicle Edge Computing System Using 3D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06459/) (2019)
- [Cooper: Cooperative Perception for Connected Autonomous Vehicles based on 3D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05265/) (2019)
- [V2V4Real: A Real-world Large-scale Dataset for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Cooperative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07601/) (2023)
- [Robust Collaborative 3D Object Detection in Presence of Pose Errors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07214/) (2022)
- [V2X-Seq: A Large-Scale Sequential Dataset for Vehicle-Infrastructure Cooperative Perception and Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.05938/) (2023)
- [CIA-SSD: Confident IoU-Aware Single-Stage Object Detector From Point Cloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.03015/) (2020)
- [COOPERNAUT: End-to-End Driving with Cooperative Perception for Networked Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.02222/) (2022)
- [Latency-Aware Collaborative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08560/) (2022)
- [Fully Sparse 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.10035/) (2022)
- [SOE-Net: A Self-Attention and Orientation Encoding Network for Point Cloud based Place Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.12430/) (2020)
- [Learning for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Cooperative Perception under Lossy Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.08273/) (2022)
- [Keypoints-Based Deep Feature Fusion for Cooperative Vehicle Detection of Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.11615/) (2021)
- [RCooper: A Real-world Large-scale Dataset for Roadside Cooperative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10145/) (2024)
- [DI-V2X: Learning Domain-Invariant Representation for Vehicle-Infrastructure Collaborative 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15742/) (2023)
- [Collaborative Semantic Occupancy Prediction with Hybrid Feature Fusion in Connected Automated Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.07635/) (2024)
- [Flow-Based Feature Fusion for Vehicle-Infrastructure Cooperative 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01682/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 15 of 15)

- [SparseCoop: Cooperative Perception with Kinematic-Grounded Queries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.06838/) (2025)
- [SafeCoop: Unravelling Full Stack Safety in Agentic Collaborative Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.18123/) (2025)
- [FocalComm: Hard Instance-Aware Multi-Agent Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.13982/) (2025)
- [Background Fades, Foreground Leads: Curriculum-Guided Background Pruning for Efficient Foreground-Centric Collaborative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.19250/) (2025)
- [Long-SCOPE: Fully Sparse Long-Range Cooperative 3D Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.09206/) (2026)
- [BOLT: Online Lightweight Adaptation for Preparation-Free Heterogeneous Cooperative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.00405/) (2026)
- [Node Learning: A Framework for Adaptive, Decentralised and Collaborative Network Edge AI](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.16814/) (2026)
- [CoLC: Communication-Efficient Collaborative Perception with LiDAR Completion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.00682/) (2026)
- [When the City Teaches the Car: Label-Free 3D Perception from Infrastructure](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.16742/) (2026)
- [UECP: Uncertainty-Enhanced Collaborative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.23046/) (2026)
- [SimBEV2X: A Large-Scale Dataset and Data Generation Tool for Multi-Task Vehicle-to-Everything Cooperative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.23910/) (2026)
- [CoAnchor: Robust Collaborative Perception under Spatio-Temporal Misalignment via Object-Level Anchors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.21055/) (2026)
- [VIPS: Vehicle-Infrastructure Cooperative Planning Benchmark via Pseudo-Simulation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.02462/) (2026)
- [CoVLM-Bench: A Real-World Benchmark for Cooperative Driving Question Answering and Planning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.35823/) (2026)
- [Embodied Semantic Communication for Collective Autonomous Agents: A Tutorial on Representation, Wireless Delivery, and Closed-Loop Coordination](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.35936/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Cooperative perception can increase the view field and decrease the occlusion of an ego vehicle, hence improving the perception performance and safety of autonomous driving. Despite the success of previous works on cooperative object detection, they mostly operate on dense Bird's Eye View (BEV) feature maps, which are computationally demanding and can hardly be extended to long-range detection problems. More efficient fully sparse frameworks are rarely explored. In this work, we design a fully sparse framework, SparseAlign, with three key features: an enhanced sparse 3D backbone, a query-based temporal context learning module, and a robust detection head specially tailored for sparse features. Extensive experimental results on both OPV2V and DairV2X datasets show that our framework, despite its sparsity, outperforms the state of the art with less communication bandwidth requirements. In addition, experiments on the OPV2Vt and DairV2Xt datasets for time-aligned cooperative object detection also show a significant performance gain compared to the baseline works.