# DriveFlow: Rectified Flow Adaptation for Robust 3D Object Detection in Autonomous Driving

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.18713 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.18713/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Diffusion and flow policies for robotics, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models.
- Builds on 27 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Nov 2025.

## Placed in

- Diffusion models / [Diffusion and flow policies for robotics](https://mlsanity.com/diffusion/diffusion-and-flow-policies-for-robotics/)

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

- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [Denoising Diffusion Implicit Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.02502/) (2020)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Scaling Rectified Flow Transformers for High-Resolution Image Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.03206/) (2024)
- [Flow Straight and Fast: Learning to Generate and Transfer Data with Rectified Flow](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.03003/) (2022)
- [Benchmarking Neural Network Robustness to Common Corruptions and Perturbations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.12261/) (2019)
- [InternVL: Scaling up Vision Foundation Models and Aligning for Generic Visual-Linguistic Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.14238/) (2023)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [Objects as Points](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.07850/) (2019)
- [BEVFusion: Multi-Task Multi-Sensor Fusion with Unified Bird's-Eye View Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.13542/) (2022)
- [Multi-View 3D Object Detection Network for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07759/) (2016)
- [Pseudo-LiDAR from Visual Depth Estimation: Bridging the Gap in 3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.07179/) (2018)
- [Categorical Depth Distribution Network for Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.01100/) (2021)
- [LayoutDiffusion: Controllable Diffusion Model for Layout-to-image Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.17189/) (2023)
- [FlowEdit: Inversion-Free Text-Based Editing Using Pre-Trained Flow Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.08629/) (2024)
- [Taming Rectified Flow for Inversion and Editing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.04746/) (2024)
- [Objects are Different: Flexible Monocular 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.02323/) (2021)
- [GAIA-2: A Controllable Multi-View Generative World Model for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.20523/) (2025)
- [Rethinking Pseudo-LiDAR Representation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.04582/) (2020)
- [FreeControl: Training-Free Spatial Control of Any Text-to-Image Diffusion Model with Any Condition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.07536/) (2023)
- [HVNet: Hybrid Voxel Network for LiDAR Based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.00186/) (2020)
- [Benchmarking and Improving Bird's Eye View Perception Robustness in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.17426/) (2024)
- [MonoCD: Monocular 3D Object Detection with Complementary Depths](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03181/) (2024)
- [MonoGround: Detecting Monocular 3D Objects from the Ground](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.07372/) (2022)
- [MonoDGP: Monocular 3D Object Detection with Decoupled-Query and Geometry-Error Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.19590/) (2024)
- [DriveGEN: Generalized and Robust 3D Detection in Driving via Controllable Text-to-Image Diffusion Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.11122/) (2025)

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

- [FutureX: Enhance End-to-End Autonomous Driving via Latent Chain-of-Thought World Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.11226/) (2025)
- [OmniLiDAR: A Unified Diffusion Framework for Multi-Domain 3D LiDAR Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13815/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In autonomous driving, vision-centric 3D object detection recognizes and localizes 3D objects from RGB images. However, due to high annotation costs and diverse outdoor scenes, training data often fails to cover all possible test scenarios, known as the out-of-distribution (OOD) issue. Training-free image editing offers a promising solution for improving model robustness by training data enhancement without any modifications to pre-trained diffusion models. Nevertheless, inversion-based methods often suffer from limited effectiveness and inherent inaccuracies, while recent rectified-flow-based approaches struggle to preserve objects with accurate 3D geometry. In this paper, we propose DriveFlow, a Rectified Flow Adaptation method for training data enhancement in autonomous driving based on pre-trained Text-to-Image flow models. Based on frequency decomposition, DriveFlow introduces two strategies to adapt noise-free editing paths derived from text-conditioned velocities. 1) High-Frequency Foreground Preservation: DriveFlow incorporates a high-frequency alignment loss for foreground to maintain precise 3D object geometry. 2) Dual-Frequency Background Optimization: DriveFlow also conducts dual-frequency optimization for background, balancing editing flexibility and semantic consistency. Comprehensive experiments validate the effectiveness and efficiency of DriveFlow, demonstrating comprehensive performance improvements on all categories across OOD scenarios. Code is available at https://github.com/Hongbin98/DriveFlow.