Liao, Brian Hsuan-Cheng (DENSO AUTOMOTIVE Deutschland GmbH), Cheng, Chih-Hong (Chalmers University of Technology), Esen, Hasan (DENSO AUTOMOTIVE Deutschland GmbH), Knoll, Alois (Technische Universität München)

USC: Uncompromising Spatial Constraints for Safety-Oriented 3D Object Detectors in Autonomous Driving

Scheduled for presentation during the Poster Session "3D Object Detection" (FrAT13), Friday, September 27, 2024, 10:30−12:30, Foyer

2024 IEEE 27th International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), September 24- 27, 2024, Edmonton, Canada

This information is tentative and subject to change. Compiled on October 8, 2024

Abstract

In this work, we consider the safety-oriented performance of 3D object detectors in autonomous driving contexts. Specifically, despite impressive results shown by the mass literature, developers often find it hard to ensure the safe deployment of these learning-based perception models. Attributing the challenge to the lack of safety-oriented metrics, we hereby present uncompromising spatial constraints (USC), which characterize a simple yet important localization requirement demanding the predictions to fully cover the objects when seen from the autonomous vehicle. The constraints, as we formulate using the perspective and bird’s-eye views, can be naturally reflected by quantitative measures, such that having an object detector with a higher score implies a lower risk of collision. Finally, beyond model evaluation, we incorporate the quantitative measures into common loss functions to enable safety-oriented fine-tuning for existing models. With experiments using the nuScenes dataset and a closed-loop simulation, our work demonstrates such considerations of safety notions at the perception level not only improve model performances beyond accuracy but also allow for a more direct linkage to actual system safety.