Robustness-Aware 3D Object Detection in Autonomous Driving: A Review and Outlook

In the realm of modern autonomous driving, the perception system is indispensable for accurately assessing the state of the surrounding environment, thereby enabling informed prediction and planning. The key step to this system is related to 3D object detection that utilizes vehicle-mounted sensors such as LiDAR and cameras to identify the size, the category, and the location of nearby objects. Despite the surge in 3D object detection methods aimed at enhancing detection precision and efficiency, there is a gap in the literature that systematically examines their resilience against environmental variations, noise, and weather changes. This study emphasizes the importance of robustness, alongside accuracy and latency, in evaluating perception systems under practical scenarios. Our work presents an extensive survey of camera-only, LiDAR-only, and multi-modal 3D object detection algorithms, thoroughly evaluating their trade-off between accuracy, latency, and robustness, particularly on datasets like KITTI-C and nuScenes-C to ensure fair comparisons. Among these, multi-modal 3D detection approaches exhibit superior robustness, and a novel taxonomy is introduced to reorganize the literature for enhanced clarity. This survey aims to offer a more practical perspective on the current capabilities and the constraints of 3D object detection algorithms in real-world applications, thus steering future research towards robustness-centric advancements.

I. Introduction

Autonomous driving systems, fundamental to the future of transportation, heavily rely on advanced perception, decision-making, and control technologies. These systems employ a range of sensors [1] such as camera, LiDAR and radar as depicted in Fig. 1, to effectively perceive surrounding environments. This capability is crucial for recognizing road signs, detecting and tracking vehicles, and predicting pedestrian behaviors, enabling safe operations amidst complex traffic conditions [2]. Fig. 1.

An illustration of 3D object detection in autonomous driving scenarios with different sensors.