RoAD Benchmark: How LiDAR Models Fail under Coupled Domain Shifts and Label Evolution

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Authors: SuBeen Lee, Siyeong Lee, Namil Kim, Jaesik Choi
Cited by: 0

Abstract

For 3D perception systems to operate reliably in real-world environments, they must remain robust to evolving sensor characteristics and changes in object taxonomies. However, existing adaptive learning paradigms struggle in LiDAR settings where domain shifts and label-space evolution occur simultaneously. We introduce \textbf{Robust Autonomous Driving under Dataset shifts (RoAD)}, a benchmark for evaluating model robustness in LiDAR-based object classification under intertwined domain shifts and label evolution, including subclass refinement, unseen-class insertion, and label expansion. RoAD evaluates three learning scenarios with increasing adaptation, from fixed representations (zero-shot transfer and linear probing) to sequential updates (continual learning). Experiments span large-scale autonomous driving datasets, including Waymo, nuScenes, and Argoverse2. Our analysis identifies central failure modes: (i) \textit{limited transferability} under subclass refinement and unseen-class insertion, and on non-vehicle class; and (ii) \textit{accelerated forgetting during continual adaptation}, driven by feature collapse and self-supervised learning objectives.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Domain Adaptation and Few-Shot Learning Advanced Neural Network Applications Autonomous Vehicle Technology and Safety

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
9 January 2026
Document type
Preprint