# Query2Uncertainty: Robust Uncertainty Quantification and Calibration for 3D Object Detection under Distribution Shift

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.05328 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.05328/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 44 of its 56 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 6 May 2026.

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

- [End-to-End Object Detection with Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.12872/) (2020)
- [On Calibration of Modern Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.04599/) (2017)
- [nuScenes: A multimodal dataset for autonomous driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.11027/) (2019)
- [Dropout as a Bayesian Approximation: Representing Model Uncertainty in Deep Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1506.02142/) (2015)
- [Simple and Scalable Predictive Uncertainty Estimation using Deep Ensembles](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1612.01474/) (2016)
- [What Uncertainties Do We Need in Bayesian Deep Learning for Computer Vision?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.04977/) (2017)
- [Density estimation using Real NVP](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1605.08803/) (2016)
- [A Simple Unified Framework for Detecting Out-of-Distribution Samples and Adversarial Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.03888/) (2018)
- [BEVFormer: Learning Bird's-Eye-View Representation from Multi-Camera Images via Spatiotemporal Transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.17270/) (2022)
- [DETR3D: 3D Object Detection from Multi-view Images via 3D-to-2D Queries](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.06922/) (2021)
- [PETR: Position Embedding Transformation for Multi-View 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.05625/) (2022)
- [Accurate Uncertainties for Deep Learning Using Calibrated Regression](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.00263/) (2018)
- [PETRv2: A Unified Framework for 3D Perception from Multi-Camera Images](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.01256/) (2022)
- [Exploring Object-Centric Temporal Modeling for Efficient Multi-View 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11926/) (2023)
- [VOS: Learning What You Don't Know by Virtual Outlier Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.01197/) (2022)
- [Deep Deterministic Uncertainty: A Simple Baseline](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2102.11582/) (2021)
- [Bounding Box Regression with Uncertainty for Accurate Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.08545/) (2018)
- [Robust Collaborative 3D Object Detection in Presence of Pose Errors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07214/) (2022)
- [A Review and Comparative Study on Probabilistic Object Detection in Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.10671/) (2020)
- [Gaussian YOLOv3: An Accurate and Fast Object Detector Using Localization Uncertainty for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.04620/) (2019)
- [CenterFormer: Center-based Transformer for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.05588/) (2022)
- [Multivariate Confidence Calibration for Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.13546/) (2020)
- [GMMSeg: Gaussian Mixture based Generative Semantic Segmentation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.02025/) (2022)
- [Towards Safe Autonomous Driving: Capture Uncertainty in the Deep Neural Network For Lidar 3D Vehicle Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1804.05132/) (2018)
- [Sampling-free Epistemic Uncertainty Estimation Using Approximated Variance Propagation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.00598/) (2019)
- [BayesOD: A Bayesian Approach for Uncertainty Estimation in Deep Object Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.03838/) (2019)
- [Post-hoc Uncertainty Calibration for Domain Drift Scenarios](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.10988/) (2020)
- [Estimating and Evaluating Regression Predictive Uncertainty in Deep Object Detectors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2101.05036/) (2021)
- [Can We Trust You? On Calibration of a Probabilistic Object Detector for Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.12358/) (2019)
- [Towards Improving Calibration in Object Detection Under Domain Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.07601/) (2022)

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

- [Towards Trustworthy and Explainable AI for Perception Models: From Concept to Prototype Vehicle Deployment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.16087/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Reliable uncertainty estimation for 3D object detection is critical for deploying safe autonomous systems, yet modern detectors remain poorly calibrated, especially under distribution shifts. Although post-hoc calibration methods address this issue and provide improved calibration for in-distribution tests, they fail to adapt in distribution-shifted scenarios. In this work, we address this issue and introduce a density-aware calibration method that couples post-hoc calibrators with the feature density of latent object queries from DETR-style 3D object detectors. These queries form a compact, location and class-aware feature, ideal for density estimation, allowing our approach to adjust model confidences in distribution-shift scenarios. By fitting a density estimator on these query features, our approach jointly recalibrates both classification and bounding box regression uncertainties. On both a multi-view camera and LiDAR-based detector, our approach consistently outperforms standard post-hoc methods in both in-distribution and distribution-shifted scenarios. Code available https://tillbeemelmanns.github.io/query2uncertainty/ .