# RelMap: Enhancing Online Map Construction with Class-Aware Spatial Relation and Semantic Priors

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.21567 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21567/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 57 of its 67 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Jul 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 57)

- [Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1512.03385/) (2015)
- [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)
- [Outrageously Large Neural Networks: The Sparsely-Gated Mixture-of-Experts Layer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1701.06538/) (2017)
- [Switch Transformers: Scaling to Trillion Parameter Models with Simple and Efficient Sparsity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.03961/) (2021)
- [Planning-oriented Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2212.10156/) (2022)
- [Lift, Splat, Shoot: Encoding Images From Arbitrary Camera Rigs by Implicitly Unprojecting to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05711/) (2020)
- [DeepSeekMoE: Towards Ultimate Expert Specialization in Mixture-of-Experts Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.06066/) (2024)
- [Argoverse 2: Next Generation Datasets for Self-Driving Perception and Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00493/) (2023)
- [ST-MoE: Designing Stable and Transferable Sparse Expert Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08906/) (2022)
- [Multi-Label Image Recognition with Graph Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03582/) (2019)
- [BASE Layers: Simplifying Training of Large, Sparse Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.16716/) (2021)
- [MapTR: Structured Modeling and Learning for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.14437/) (2022)
- [Relation Networks for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.11575/) (2017)
- [HDMapNet: An Online HD Map Construction and Evaluation Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06307/) (2021)
- [Motion Transformer with Global Intention Localization and Local Movement Refinement](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.13508/) (2022)
- [Cross-view Transformers for real-time Map-view Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.02833/) (2022)
- [VectorMapNet: End-to-end Vectorized HD Map Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08920/) (2022)
- [MapTRv2: An End-to-End Framework for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.05736/) (2023)
- [Mixture of LoRA Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.13628/) (2024)
- [StreamMapNet: Streaming Mapping Network for Vectorized Online HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12570/) (2023)
- [GameFormer: Game-theoretic Modeling and Learning of Transformer-based Interactive Prediction and Planning for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.05760/) (2023)
- [MTR++: Multi-Agent Motion Prediction with Symmetric Scene Modeling and Guided Intention Querying](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.17770/) (2023)
- [StableMoE: Stable Routing Strategy for Mixture of Experts](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.08396/) (2022)
- [PivotNet: Vectorized Pivot Learning for End-to-end HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16477/) (2023)
- [End-to-End Vectorized HD-map Construction with Piecewise Bezier Curve](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09700/) (2023)
- [Efficient and Robust 2D-to-BEV Representation Learning via Geometry-guided Kernel Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.04584/) (2022)
- [MapTracker: Tracking with Strided Memory Fusion for Consistent Vector HD Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15951/) (2024)
- [Augmenting Lane Perception and Topology Understanding with Standard Definition Navigation Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.04079/) (2023)
- [P-MapNet: Far-seeing Map Generator Enhanced by both SDMap and HDMap Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10521/) (2024)

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

- [nuReasoning: A Reasoning-Centric Dataset and Benchmark for Long-Tail Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.31572/) (2026)
- [GaussianMap: Learning Gaussian Representation for Multi-Sensor Online HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31177/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Online high-definition (HD) map construction is crucial for scaling autonomous driving systems. While Transformer-based methods have become prevalent in online HD map construction, most existing approaches overlook the inherent spatial dependencies and semantic relationships among map elements, which constrains their accuracy and generalization capabilities. To address this, we propose RelMap, an end-to-end framework that explicitly models both spatial relations and semantic priors to enhance online HD map construction. Specifically, we introduce a Class-aware Spatial Relation Prior, which explicitly encodes relative positional dependencies between map elements using a learnable class-aware relation encoder. Additionally, we design a Mixture-of-Experts-based Semantic Prior, which routes features to class-specific experts based on predicted class probabilities, refining instance feature decoding. RelMap is compatible with both single-frame and temporal perception backbones, achieving state-of-the-art performance on both the nuScenes and Argoverse 2 datasets.
