# Failure Modes for Deep Learning-Based Online Mapping: How to Measure and Address Them

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.19852 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.19852/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 31 of its 39 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 20 Mar 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 31)

- [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)
- [Scalability in Perception for Autonomous Driving: Waymo Open Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.04838/) (2019)
- [Argoverse: 3D Tracking and Forecasting with Rich Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1911.02620/) (2019)
- [Argoverse 2: Next Generation Datasets for Self-Driving Perception and Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.00493/) (2023)
- [MapTR: Structured Modeling and Learning for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.14437/) (2022)
- [HDMapNet: An Online HD Map Construction and Evaluation Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.06307/) (2021)
- [VectorMapNet: End-to-end Vectorized HD Map Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.08920/) (2022)
- [Predicting Semantic Map Representations from Images using Pyramid Occupancy Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.13402/) (2020)
- [StreamMapNet: Streaming Mapping Network for Vectorized Online HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12570/) (2023)
- [Predicting the Generalization Gap in Deep Networks with Margin Distributions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.00113/) (2018)
- [Neural Map Prior for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08481/) (2023)
- [MapTracker: Tracking with Strided Memory Fusion for Consistent Vector HD Mapping](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.15951/) (2024)
- [P-MapNet: Far-seeing Map Generator Enhanced by both SDMap and HDMap Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.10521/) (2024)
- [MGMap: Mask-Guided Learning for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.00876/) (2024)
- [Localization Is All You Evaluate: Data Leakage in Online Mapping Datasets and How to Fix It](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06420/) (2023)
- [NeurIPS 2020 Competition: Predicting Generalization in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07976/) (2020)
- [Towards Long-Tailed 3D Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.08691/) (2022)
- [UniFusion: Unified Multi-view Fusion Transformer for Spatial-Temporal Representation in Bird's-Eye-View](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.08536/) (2022)
- [Enhancing 3D Lane Detection and Topology Reasoning with 2D Lane Priors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.03105/) (2024)
- [Fantastic Generalization Measures are Nowhere to be Found](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.13658/) (2023)
- [Bi-Mapper: Holistic BEV Semantic Mapping for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.04205/) (2023)
- [PrevPredMap: Exploring Temporal Modeling with Previous Predictions for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.17378/) (2024)
- [DTCLMapper: Dual Temporal Consistent Learning for Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.05518/) (2024)
- [MemFusionMap: Working Memory Fusion for Online Vectorized HD Map Construction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18737/) (2024)
- [Bias Behind the Wheel: Fairness Testing of Autonomous Driving Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.02935/) (2023)
- [In Rain or Shine: Understanding and Overcoming Dataset Bias for Improving Robustness Against Weather Corruptions for Autonomous Vehicles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.01062/) (2022)
- [Attribute Annotation and Bias Evaluation in Visual Datasets for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.06306/) (2023)
- [Quantifying Overfitting: Introducing the Overfitting Index](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.08682/) (2023)
- [A practical generalization metric for deep networks benchmarking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.01498/) (2024)

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

- [Auditing Latent-Space Monitors for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.30557/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Deep learning-based online mapping has emerged as a cornerstone of autonomous driving, yet these models frequently fail to generalize beyond familiar environments. We propose a framework to identify and measure the underlying failure modes by disentangling two effects: Memorization of input features and overfitting to known map geometries. We propose measures based on evaluation subsets that control for geographical proximity and geometric similarity between training and validation scenes. We introduce Fr'echet distance-based reconstruction statistics that capture per-element shape fidelity without threshold tuning, and define complementary failure-mode scores: a localization overfitting score quantifying the performance drop when geographic cues disappear, and a map geometry overfitting score measuring degradation as scenes become geometrically novel. Beyond models, we analyze dataset biases and contribute map geometry-aware diagnostics: A minimum-spanning-tree (MST) diversity measure for training sets and a symmetric coverage measure to quantify geometric similarity between splits. Leveraging these, we formulate an MST-based sparsification strategy that reduces redundancy and improves balancing and performance while shrinking training size. Experiments on nuScenes and Argoverse 2 across multiple state-of-the-art models yield more trustworthy assessment of generalization and show that map geometry-diverse and balanced training sets lead to improved performance. Our results motivate failure-mode-aware protocols and map geometry-centric dataset design for deployable online mapping.