# RoAD Benchmark: How LiDAR Models Fail under Coupled Domain Shifts and Label Evolution

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.07855 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.07855/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 56 of its 74 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Jan 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 56)

- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [PyTorch: An Imperative Style, High-Performance Deep Learning Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.01703/) (2019)
- [A Simple Framework for Contrastive Learning of Visual Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2002.05709/) (2020)
- [PointNet: Deep Learning on Point Sets for 3D Classification and Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00593/) (2016)
- [Overcoming catastrophic forgetting in neural networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.00796/) (2016)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [PointNet++: Deep Hierarchical Feature Learning on Point Sets in a Metric Space](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.02413/) (2017)
- [Supervised Contrastive Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.11362/) (2020)
- [Learning without Forgetting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1606.09282/) (2016)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [Gradient Episodic Memory for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.08840/) (2017)
- [Point Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.00931/) (2020)
- [4D Spatio-Temporal ConvNets: Minkowski Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08755/) (2019)
- [KPConv: Flexible and Deformable Convolution for Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.08889/) (2019)
- [Experience Replay for Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1811.11682/) (2018)
- [Dark Experience for General Continual Learning: a Strong, Simple Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.07211/) (2020)
- [A Comprehensive Survey of Continual Learning: Theory, Method and Application](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.00487/) (2023)
- [3D Semantic Segmentation with Submanifold Sparse Convolutional Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1711.10275/) (2017)
- [PCT: Point cloud transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.09688/) (2020)
- [Multi-View 3D Object Detection Network for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1611.07759/) (2016)
- [Argoverse 2: Next Generation Datasets for Self-Driving Perception and Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00493/) (2023)
- [Self-supervised Visual Feature Learning with Deep Neural Networks: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1902.06162/) (2019)
- [Deep Visual Domain Adaptation: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03601/) (2018)
- [Point Transformer V3: Simpler, Faster, Stronger](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10035/) (2023)
- [Multi-view Convolutional Neural Networks for 3D Shape Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1505.00880/) (2015)
- [Point Transformer V2: Grouped Vector Attention and Partition-based Pooling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.05666/) (2022)
- [Rainbow Memory: Continual Learning with a Memory of Diverse Samples](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.17230/) (2021)
- [Task-Free Continual Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.03596/) (2018)
- [Adversarial Reciprocal Points Learning for Open Set Recognition](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00953/) (2021)
- [Neural Collapse Inspired Feature-Classifier Alignment for Few-Shot Class Incremental Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03004/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

For 3D perception systems to operate reliably in real-world environments, they must remain robust to evolving sensor characteristics and changes in object taxonomies. However, existing adaptive learning paradigms struggle in LiDAR settings where domain shifts and label-space evolution occur simultaneously. We introduce Robust Autonomous Driving under Dataset shifts (RoAD), a benchmark for evaluating model robustness in LiDAR-based object classification under intertwined domain shifts and label evolution, including subclass refinement, unseen-class insertion, and label expansion. RoAD evaluates three learning scenarios with increasing adaptation, from fixed representations (zero-shot transfer and linear probing) to sequential updates (continual learning). Experiments span large-scale autonomous driving datasets, including Waymo, nuScenes, and Argoverse2. Our analysis identifies central failure modes: (i) textitlimited transferability under subclass refinement and unseen-class insertion, and on non-vehicle class; and (ii) textitaccelerated forgetting during continual adaptation, driven by feature collapse and self-supervised learning objectives.