# Cross-Paradigm Evaluation of Gaze-Based Semantic Object Identification for Intelligent Vehicles

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.01452 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.01452/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 7 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 1 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [Qwen-VL: A Versatile Vision-Language Model for Understanding, Localization, Text Reading, and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12966/) (2023)
- [BDD100K: A Diverse Driving Dataset for Heterogeneous Multitask Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1805.04687/) (2018)
- [EfficientNetV2: Smaller Models and Faster Training](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.00298/) (2021)
- [YOLOv13: Real-Time Object Detection with Hypergraph-Enhanced Adaptive Visual Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.17733/) (2025)
- [Object-aware Gaze Target Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.09662/) (2023)
- [Learning Visual Grounding from Generative Vision and Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.14563/) (2024)
- [Vision-Language Models for Autonomous Driving: CLIP-Based Dynamic Scene Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.05566/) (2025)

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

- [TransGaze-Object: Transformer Based Driver Gaze Object Prediction Framework in Real Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.10139/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Understanding where drivers direct their visual attention during driving, as characterized by gaze behavior, is critical for developing next-generation advanced driver-assistance systems and improving road safety. This paper tackles this challenge as a semantic identification task from the road scenes captured by a vehicle's front-view camera. Specifically, the collocation of gaze points with object semantics is investigated using three distinct vision-based approaches: direct object detection (YOLOv13), segmentation-assisted classification (SAM2 paired with EfficientNetV2 versus YOLOv13), and query-based Vision-Language Models, VLMs (Qwen2.5-VL-7b versus Qwen2.5-VL-32b). The results demonstrate that the direct object detection (YOLOv13) and Qwen2.5-VL-32b significantly outperform other approaches, achieving Macro F1-Scores over 0.84. The large VLM (Qwen2.5-VL-32b), in particular, exhibited superior robustness and performance for identifying small, safety-critical objects such as traffic lights, especially in adverse nighttime conditions. Conversely, the segmentation-assisted paradigm suffers from a "part-versus-whole" semantic gap that led to large failure in recall. The results reveal a fundamental trade-off between the real-time efficiency of traditional detectors and the richer contextual understanding and robustness offered by large VLMs. These findings provide critical insights and practical guidance for the design of future human-aware intelligent driver monitoring systems.