# Towards Accurate State Estimation: Motion Dynamics Kalman Filter for 3D Multi-Object Tracking

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.07254 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.07254/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 14 of its 28 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 12 May 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 14 of 14)

- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [PointRCNN: 3D Object Proposal Generation and Detection from Point Cloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04244/) (2018)
- [PV-RCNN: Point-Voxel Feature Set Abstraction for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.13192/) (2019)
- [SimpleTrack: Understanding and Rethinking 3D Multi-object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.09621/) (2021)
- [EagerMOT: 3D Multi-Object Tracking via Sensor Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.14682/) (2021)
- [Virtual Sparse Convolution for Multimodal 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02314/) (2023)
- [Immortal Tracker: Tracklet Never Dies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.13672/) (2021)
- [DeepFusionMOT: A 3D Multi-Object Tracking Framework Based on Camera-LiDAR Fusion with Deep Association](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.12100/) (2022)
- [Mono-Camera 3D Multi-Object Tracking Using Deep Learning Detections and PMBM Filtering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.09975/) (2018)
- [PolarMOT: How Far Can Geometric Relations Take Us in 3D Multi-Object Tracking?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.01957/) (2022)
- [Once Detected, Never Lost: Surpassing Human Performance in Offline LiDAR based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.12315/) (2023)
- [TripletTrack: 3D Object Tracking using Triplet Embeddings and LSTM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.16204/) (2022)
- [RobMOT: Robust 3D Multi-Object Tracking by Observational Noise and State Estimation Drift Mitigation on LiDAR PointCloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.11536/) (2024)
- [DFR-FastMOT: Detection Failure Resistant Tracker for Fast Multi-Object Tracking Based on Sensor Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.14807/) (2023)

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

- [Polycepta: Object-Centric Appearance Estimation for Multi-Object Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.23604/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Robust 3D state estimation in multi-object tracking is crucial for object localization in self-driving vehicles. Misalignment between the Kalman filter (KF) motion model and an object's motion can cause state drift, particularly in distant and occlusion cases. The static motion model assumption in the conventional KF is widely used in 3D MOT due to its low latency; however, its estimation accuracy degrades as the object's motion disaligns with the chosen model due to traffic. Although recent work introduces a multimodel KF that runs multiple motion models simultaneously to improve state robustness, it incurs significant computational overhead, so many studies still favor the constant-motion KF to maintain efficiency. This work addresses this trade-off by introducing a motion dynamics Kalman filter (MD-KF) that accounts for motion variation through temporal modeling of object motion and adaptively scales the contribution of the motion components in the motion model to correct state-prediction drift caused by this variation, while maintaining computational efficiency by retaining a single-model structure. Evaluations on KITTI and the Waymo Open Dataset, complemented by vehicle experiments, show that MD-KF achieves tracking performance comparable to multimodel KF with an average 1.72x speedup, while outperforming it in handling highly distant and prolonged occluded objects.