# C2E: Boosting Ego-Only 3D Object Detection via Multi-Teacher Contrastive Knowledge Distillation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.01827 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.01827/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Detection and dense prediction distillation, one of 12 directions in Knowledge distillation.
- Builds on 41 of its 52 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Jul 2026.

## Placed in

- Knowledge distillation / [Detection and dense prediction distillation](https://mlsanity.com/distill/detection-and-dense-prediction-distillation/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 41)

- [CBAM: Convolutional Block Attention Module](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1807.06521/) (2018)
- [Center-based 3D Object Detection and Tracking](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.11275/) (2020)
- [PointRCNN: 3D Object Proposal Generation and Detection from Point Cloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1812.04244/) (2018)
- [PV-RCNN: Point-Voxel Feature Set Abstraction for 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.13192/) (2019)
- [Voxel R-CNN: Towards High Performance Voxel-based 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.15712/) (2020)
- [Point-GNN: Graph Neural Network for 3D Object Detection in a Point Cloud](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2003.01251/) (2020)
- [V2X-ViT: Vehicle-to-Everything Cooperative Perception with Vision Transformer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.10638/) (2022)
- [OPV2V: An Open Benchmark Dataset and Fusion Pipeline for Perception with Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.07644/) (2021)
- [DAIR-V2X: A Large-Scale Dataset for Vehicle-Infrastructure Cooperative 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05575/) (2022)
- [Where2comm: Communication-Efficient Collaborative Perception via Spatial Confidence Maps](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.12836/) (2022)
- [Learning Distilled Collaboration Graph for Multi-Agent Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.00643/) (2021)
- [Cooper: Cooperative Perception for Connected Autonomous Vehicles based on 3D Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1905.05265/) (2019)
- [2DPASS: 2D Priors Assisted Semantic Segmentation on LiDAR Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.04397/) (2022)
- [V2V4Real: A Real-world Large-scale Dataset for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Cooperative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07601/) (2023)
- [3D Object Detection for Autonomous Driving: A Comprehensive Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.09474/) (2022)
- [Robust Collaborative 3D Object Detection in Presence of Pose Errors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.07214/) (2022)
- [Cross-Image Relational Knowledge Distillation for Semantic Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06986/) (2022)
- [Lidar for Autonomous Driving: The principles, challenges, and trends for automotive lidar and perception systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.08467/) (2020)
- [Collaborative Perception in Autonomous Driving: Methods, Datasets and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.06262/) (2023)
- [Virtual Sparse Convolution for Multimodal 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.02314/) (2023)
- [Model-Agnostic Multi-Agent Perception Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.13168/) (2022)
- [Uncertainty Quantification of Collaborative Detection for Self-Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.08162/) (2022)
- [Towards Vehicle-to-everything Autonomous Driving: A Survey on Collaborative Perception](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.16714/) (2023)
- [DI-V2X: Learning Domain-Invariant Representation for Vehicle-Infrastructure Collaborative 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.15742/) (2023)
- [L4DR: LiDAR-4DRadar Fusion for Weather-Robust 3D Object Detection](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03677/) (2024)
- [Adaptive Feature Fusion for Cooperative Perception using LiDAR Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2208.00116/) (2022)
- [CoSDH: Communication-Efficient Collaborative Perception via Supply-Demand Awareness and Intermediate-Late Hybridization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.03430/) (2025)
- [Interruption-Aware Cooperative Perception for V2X Communication-Aided Autonomous Driving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.11821/) (2023)
- [Boosting 3D Object Detection by Simulating Multimodality on Point Clouds](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.14971/) (2022)
- [BM2CP: Efficient Collaborative Perception with LiDAR-Camera Modalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.14702/) (2023)

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

- [CoDS: Robust Collaborative Perception via Expert-driven Detection and BEV Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.14085/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

LiDAR-based 3D object detection is essential for autonomous driving systems. However, traditional Ego-only Perception (Eo-Perception) suffers from limited perspective and occlusions in a complex outdoor environment, leading to performance bottlenecks. Recently, research on multi-agent Collaborative Perception (Co-Perception) has demonstrated excellent performance, but high communication costs and accumulated pose error hinder its application. To address this, we explore a novel C2E (Co-Perception to Eo-Perception) paradigm through the Multi-to-Single (M2S) agent contrastive knowledge distillation framework. Our M2S framework first designs Multi-Level Feature Enhancement module to provide more stable features, and introduces Auxiliary Point Cloud Reconstruction and Multi-Teacher Contrastive Distillation mechanisms to mitigate domain gaps in point cloud and feature distributions within the C2E paradigm. Benefiting from this, our M2S can retain the excellent performance of collaborative perception while effectively avoiding the drawbacks, such as communication delays and positioning errors. Extensive experiments on the V2XSet, V2V4Real and DAIR-V2X datasets show the effectiveness and generalizability of our M2S framework when combined with the state-of-the-art CoSDH model and other excellent 3D detectors. Our M2S framework can deliver up to a 8.64% improvement in 3D mAP performance without introducing any communication costs.