# SparseLaneSTP: Leveraging Spatio-Temporal Priors with Sparse Transformers for 3D Lane Detection

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.04968 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.04968/

## Key facts

- Cited by 4 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 44 of its 58 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 8 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 44)

- [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)
- [FlashAttention: Fast and Memory-Efficient Exact Attention with IO-Awareness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2205.14135/) (2022)
- [Deformable DETR: Deformable Transformers for End-to-End Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.04159/) (2020)
- [FlashAttention-2: Faster Attention with Better Parallelism and Work Partitioning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.08691/) (2023)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [BEVFormer: Learning Bird's-Eye-View Representation from Multi-Camera Images via Spatiotemporal Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17270/) (2022)
- [Lift, Splat, Shoot: Encoding Images From Arbitrary Camera Rigs by Implicitly Unprojecting to 3D](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2008.05711/) (2020)
- [BEVDet: High-performance Multi-camera 3D Object Detection in Bird-Eye-View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.11790/) (2021)
- [PETRv2: A Unified Framework for 3D Perception from Multi-Camera Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01256/) (2022)
- [BEVDet4D: Exploit Temporal Cues in Multi-camera 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17054/) (2022)
- [An End-to-End Transformer Model for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.08141/) (2021)
- [Exploring Object-Centric Temporal Modeling for Efficient Multi-View 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11926/) (2023)
- [MapTR: Structured Modeling and Learning for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.14437/) (2022)
- [One Million Scenes for Autonomous Driving: ONCE Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11037/) (2021)
- [Spatial As Deep: Spatial CNN for Traffic Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1712.06080/) (2017)
- [Learning Lightweight Lane Detection CNNs by Self Attention Distillation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.00821/) (2019)
- [Sparse4D: Multi-view 3D Object Detection with Sparse Spatial-Temporal Fusion](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.10581/) (2022)
- [PersFormer: 3D Lane Detection via Perspective Transformer and the OpenLane Benchmark](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.11089/) (2022)
- [Keep your Eyes on the Lane: Real-time Attention-guided Lane Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.12035/) (2020)
- [Towards End-to-End Lane Detection: an Instance Segmentation Approach](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.05591/) (2018)
- [End-to-end Lane Shape Prediction with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.04233/) (2020)
- [3D-LaneNet: End-to-End 3D Multiple Lane Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.10203/) (2018)
- [PolyLaneNet: Lane Estimation via Deep Polynomial Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.10924/) (2020)
- [Sparse4D v2: Recurrent Temporal Fusion with Sparse Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.14018/) (2023)
- [Rethinking Efficient Lane Detection via Curve Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02431/) (2022)
- [Key Points Estimation and Point Instance Segmentation Approach for Lane Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.06604/) (2020)
- [Gen-LaneNet: A Generalized and Scalable Approach for 3D Lane Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.10656/) (2020)
- [A Keypoint-based Global Association Network for Lane Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.07335/) (2022)
- [Focus on Local: Detecting Lane Marker from Bottom Up via Key Point](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2105.13680/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 4 of 4)

- [Collaborative Learning for Semi-Supervised LiDAR Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.17135/) (2026)
- [HSDF-Lane: Height-Aligned Signed Distance Field with Semantic Lane Prior for 3D Lane Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.31172/) (2026)
- [3D Lane Detection with Odometry for High-Speed Vehicle Racing](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.14248/) (2026)
- [WZPlanner: Safe End-to-End Path Planning for Autonomous Driving in Work Zones](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.19393/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

3D lane detection has emerged as a critical challenge in autonomous driving, encompassing identification and localization of lane markings and the 3D road surface. Conventional 3D methods detect lanes from dense birds-eye-viewed (BEV) features, though erroneous transformations often result in a poor feature representation misaligned with the true 3D road surface. While recent sparse lane detectors have surpassed dense BEV approaches, they completely disregard valuable lane-specific priors. Furthermore, existing methods fail to utilize historic lane observations, which yield the potential to resolve ambiguities in situations of poor visibility. To address these challenges, we present SparseLaneSTP, a novel method that integrates both geometric properties of the lane structure and temporal information into a sparse lane transformer. It introduces a new lane-specific spatio-temporal attention mechanism, a continuous lane representation tailored for sparse architectures as well as temporal regularization. Identifying weaknesses of existing 3D lane datasets, we also introduce a precise and consistent 3D lane dataset using a simple yet effective auto-labeling strategy. Our experimental section proves the benefits of our contributions and demonstrates state-of-the-art performance across all detection and error metrics on existing 3D lane detection benchmarks as well as on our novel dataset.