Papers › Benchmarking Robustness in Object Detection: Autonomous Driving when Winter is Coming

Benchmarking Robustness in Object Detection: Autonomous Driving when Winter is Coming

17 Jul 2019arXiv:1907.07484archive 2025-07-28

Claudio Michaelis, Benjamin Mitzkus, Robert Geirhos, Evgenia Rusak, Oliver Bringmann, Alexander S. Ecker, Matthias Bethge, Wieland Brendel

The ability to detect objects regardless of image distortions or weather conditions is crucial for real-world applications of deep learning like autonomous driving. We here provide an easy-to-use benchmark to assess how object detection models perform when image quality degrades. The three resulting benchmark datasets, termed Pascal-C, Coco-C and Cityscapes-C, contain a large variety of image corruptions. We show that a range of standard object detection models suffer a severe performance loss on corrupted images (down to 30--60\% of the original performance). However, a simple data augmentation trick---stylizing the training images---leads to a substantial increase in robustness across corruption type, severity and dataset. We envision our comprehensive benchmark to track future progress towards building robust object detection models. Benchmark, code and data are publicly available.

PaperPDFConference PDFCodeCode Syntology ran

In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.

For agents, Syntology's MCP tool lists every function and class Syntology harvested from this paper and whether it ran (how to connect): get_harvested_code_for_paper(arxiv_id="1907.07484")

Code

Syntology Ran 2 of 5 code samples harvested from 2 repositories linked to this paper; 3 have no recorded run. Of those that ran: 1 ran · honoured contract; 1 ran · our draft was wrong.

By repository: official repository: 5 samples from 2 repositories, 2 ran. The run record, sample by sample. “Ran” means executed on a synthesized input, not that the code is correct or reproduces the paper.

bethgelab/mmdetection officialmentioned in papermentioned on GitHubpytorchApache-2.0 report
bethgelab/imagecorruptions officialmentioned in paper report
bethgelab/robust-detection-benchmark officialmentioned in paperMIT report
bethgelab/stylize-datasets officialmentioned in paperpytorch report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

5 samples harvested; 2 ran; 1 honoured the contract we drafted; 3 have no recorded run. Read from Syntology's graph 2026-09-24; that is when this build read the record, not when the samples ran.

1ran · honoured contract
1ran · our draft was wrong
3unverified

Licence: 0 of the 5 samples are pointer only, meaning Syntology does not serve that copy's text. This page shows no code text for any sample; each one links to its file in the repository.

Harvested from 2 repositories linked to this paper, official or community; each sample names its own and says which. “Ran” means the sample executed on a synthesized input. It does not mean the output is correct, and nothing here reproduces the paper's results. “Honoured” and “violated” refer to a contract Syntology drafted from the code itself; “our draft was wrong” and “fixture could not drive it” are failures of Syntology's instrument, not of the code.

Each sample ends with its code_sha256, Syntology's identity for that exact code. An agent fetches the stored sample with Syntology's MCP tool get_code(code_sha256="…") (how to connect); click an identity to copy that call.

Repository labels, per sample. official repository: The archive marks this repository official for the paper. named in the paper: The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official. community (archive-listed): In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper. found in paper text by Syntology: Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted. community: Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested. Samples from a repository marked official are listed first. Licence labels name the repository's licence as recorded at harvest. “Pointer only” means Syntology does not serve that copy's text, for one of four reasons: no licence file was found; the licence was not identified; the licence is recorded as permissive but that copy's record is not marked cleared; or the licence is outside the permissive list Syntology serves text under (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD and similar). Some licences outside that list permit redistribution, such as WTFPL, and GPL-3.0 under its conditions; they are simply not on the list. Hover a licence label for the reason. File links open the file on GitHub at the default branch, which may have changed since the harvest.

clipped_zoom bethgelab/imagecorruptions/imagecorruptions/corruptions.py official repository ran · our draft was wrong fingerprinted Apache-2.0 (permissive) · 9f1bb16740f8d1ed · report
plasma_fractal bethgelab/imagecorruptions/imagecorruptions/corruptions.py official repository ran · honoured contract fingerprinted Apache-2.0 (permissive) · 33492980f6e79af5 · report
get_coco_style_results bethgelab/robust-detection-benchmark/data-analysis/robustness_eval.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · d76f63e8bd69d6b6 · report
get_results bethgelab/robust-detection-benchmark/data-analysis/robustness_eval.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · 736f6acb4c7f3097 · report
get_voc_style_results bethgelab/robust-detection-benchmark/data-analysis/robustness_eval.py official repository unverified MIT (permissive) · d7b21a2a720fbd2b · report

Tasks

Autonomous DrivingBenchmarkingData AugmentationInstance SegmentationObjectObject DetectionRobust Object Detectionobject-detection

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

TaskDatasetModelMetricValueRank at snapshotLeaderboardReport
Robust Object Detection COCO (Common Objects in Context) Faster R-CNN with Stylized Training Data mPC [AP] 20.4 #1 of 2 Archive leaderboard report
Robust Object Detection COCO (Common Objects in Context) Faster R-CNN with Stylized Training Data rPC [%] 58.9 #1 of 2 Archive leaderboard report
Robust Object Detection COCO (Common Objects in Context) Faster R-CNN mPC [AP] 18.2 #2 of 2 Archive leaderboard report
Robust Object Detection COCO (Common Objects in Context) Faster R-CNN rPC [%] 50.2 #2 of 2 Archive leaderboard report
Robust Object Detection Cityscapes Stylized Training Data mPC [AP] 17.2 #9 of 13 Archive leaderboard report
Robust Object Detection Cityscapes test Faster R-CNN with Stylized Training Data mPC [AP] 17.2 #1 of 2 Archive leaderboard report
Robust Object Detection Cityscapes test Faster R-CNN with Stylized Training Data rPC [%] 47.4 #1 of 2 Archive leaderboard report
Robust Object Detection Cityscapes test Faster R-CNN mPC [AP] 12.2 #2 of 2 Archive leaderboard report
Robust Object Detection Cityscapes test Faster R-CNN rPC [%] 33.4 #2 of 2 Archive leaderboard report
Robust Object Detection PASCAL VOC 2007 Faster R-CNN with Stylized Training Data mPC [AP50] 56.2 #1 of 2 Archive leaderboard report
Robust Object Detection PASCAL VOC 2007 Faster R-CNN with Stylized Training Data rPC [%] 69.9 #1 of 2 Archive leaderboard report
Robust Object Detection PASCAL VOC 2007 Faster R-CNN mPC [AP50] 48.6 #2 of 2 Archive leaderboard report
Robust Object Detection PASCAL VOC 2007 Faster R-CNN rPC [%] 60.4 #2 of 2 Archive leaderboard report

Ranks are positions in the archive's leaderboards as they stood at the 2025-07-28 snapshot. Results published since then are not among these rows, so a rank here is not a current standing.

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections