MapFusion: A Novel BEV Feature Fusion Network for Multi-modal Map Construction

Map construction task plays a vital role in providing precise and comprehensive static environmental information essential for autonomous driving systems. Primary sensors include cameras and LiDAR, with configurations varying between camera-only, LiDAR-only, or camera-LiDAR fusion, based on cost-performance considerations. While fusion-based methods typically perform best, existing approaches often neglect modality interaction and rely on simple fusion strategies, which suffer from the problems of misalignment and information loss. To address these issues, we propose MapFusion, a novel multi-modal Bird's-Eye View (BEV) feature fusion method for map construction. Specifically, to solve the semantic misalignment problem between camera and LiDAR BEV features, we introduce the Cross-modal Interaction Transform (CIT) module, enabling interaction between two BEV feature spaces and enhancing feature representation through a self-attention mechanism. Additionally, we propose an effective Dual Dynamic Fusion (DDF) module to adaptively select valuable information from different modalities, which can take full advantage of the inherent information between different modalities. Moreover, MapFusion is designed to be simple and plug-and-play, easily integrated into existing pipelines. We evaluate MapFusion on two map construction tasks, including High-definition (HD) map and BEV map segmentation, to show its versatility and effectiveness. Compared with the state-of-the-art methods, MapFusion achieves 3.6% and 6.2% absolute improvements on the HD map construction and BEV map segmentation tasks on the nuScenes dataset, respectively, demonstrating the superiority of our approach.

MSC-Bench: Benchmarking and Analyzing Multi-Sensor Corruption for Driving Perception

Multi-sensor fusion models play a crucial role in autonomous driving perception, particularly in tasks like 3D object detection and HD map construction. These models provide essential and comprehensive static environmental information for autonomous driving systems. While camera-LiDAR fusion methods have shown promising results by integrating data from both modalities, they often depend on complete sensor inputs. This reliance can lead to low robustness and potential failures when sensors are corrupted or missing, raising significant safety concerns. To tackle this challenge, we introduce the Multi-Sensor Corruption Benchmark (MSC-Bench), the first comprehensive benchmark aimed at evaluating the robustness of multi-sensor autonomous driving perception models against various sensor corruptions. Our benchmark includes 16 combinations of corruption types that disrupt both camera and LiDAR inputs, either individually or concurrently. Extensive evaluations of six 3D object detection models and four HD map construction models reveal substantial performance degradation under adverse weather conditions and sensor failures, underscoring critical safety issues. The benchmark toolkit and affiliated code and model checkpoints have been made publicly accessible.

Is Your HD Map Constructor Reliable under Sensor Corruptions?

Driving systems often rely on high-definition (HD) maps for precise environmental information, which is crucial for planning and navigation. While current HD map constructors perform well under ideal conditions, their resilience to real-world challenges, \eg, adverse weather and sensor failures, is not well understood, raising safety concerns. This work introduces MapBench, the first comprehensive benchmark designed to evaluate the robustness of HD map construction methods against various sensor corruptions. Our benchmark encompasses a total of 29 types of corruptions that occur from cameras and LiDAR sensors. Extensive evaluations across 31 HD map constructors reveal significant performance degradation of existing methods under adverse weather conditions and sensor failures, underscoring critical safety concerns. We identify effective strategies for enhancing robustness, including innovative approaches that leverage multi-modal fusion, advanced data augmentation, and architectural techniques. These insights provide a pathway for developing more reliable HD map construction methods, which are essential for the advancement of autonomous driving technology. The benchmark toolkit and affiliated code and model checkpoints have been made publicly accessible.

Team Samsung-RAL: Technical Report for 2024 RoboDrive Challenge-Robust Map Segmentation Track

In this report, we describe the technical details of our submission to the 2024 RoboDrive Challenge Robust Map Segmentation Track. The Robust Map Segmentation track focuses on the segmentation of complex driving scene elements in BEV maps under varied driving conditions. Semantic map segmentation provides abundant and precise static environmental information crucial for autonomous driving systems' planning and navigation. While current methods excel in ideal circumstances, e.g., clear daytime conditions and fully functional sensors, their resilience to real-world challenges like adverse weather and sensor failures remains unclear, raising concerns about system safety. In this paper, we explored several methods to improve the robustness of the map segmentation task. The details are as follows: 1) Robustness analysis of utilizing temporal information; 2) Robustness analysis of utilizing different backbones; and 3) Data Augmentation to boost corruption robustness. Based on the evaluation results, we draw several important findings including 1) The temporal fusion module is effective in improving the robustness of the map segmentation model; 2) A strong backbone is effective for improving the corruption robustness; and 3) Some data augmentation methods are effective in improving the robustness of map segmentation models. These novel findings allowed us to achieve promising results in the 2024 RoboDrive Challenge-Robust Map Segmentation Track.

The RoboDrive Challenge: Drive Anytime Anywhere in Any Condition

In the realm of autonomous driving, robust perception under out-of-distribution conditions is paramount for the safe deployment of vehicles. Challenges such as adverse weather, sensor malfunctions, and environmental unpredictability can severely impact the performance of autonomous systems. The 2024 RoboDrive Challenge was crafted to propel the development of driving perception technologies that can withstand and adapt to these real-world variabilities. Focusing on four pivotal tasks -- BEV detection, map segmentation, semantic occupancy prediction, and multi-view depth estimation -- the competition laid down a gauntlet to innovate and enhance system resilience against typical and atypical disturbances. This year's challenge consisted of five distinct tracks and attracted 140 registered teams from 93 institutes across 11 countries, resulting in nearly one thousand submissions evaluated through our servers. The competition culminated in 15 top-performing solutions, which introduced a range of innovative approaches including advanced data augmentation, multi-sensor fusion, self-supervised learning for error correction, and new algorithmic strategies to enhance sensor robustness. These contributions significantly advanced the state of the art, particularly in handling sensor inconsistencies and environmental variability. Participants, through collaborative efforts, pushed the boundaries of current technologies, showcasing their potential in real-world scenarios. Extensive evaluations and analyses provided insights into the effectiveness of these solutions, highlighting key trends and successful strategies for improving the resilience of driving perception systems. This challenge has set a new benchmark in the field, providing a rich repository of techniques expected to guide future research in this field.