Papers › BEVDistill: Cross-Modal BEV Distillation for Multi-View 3D Object Detection

BEVDistill: Cross-Modal BEV Distillation for Multi-View 3D Object Detection

17 Nov 2022arXiv:2211.09386archive 2025-07-28

Zehui Chen, Zhenyu Li, Shiquan Zhang, Liangji Fang, Qinhong Jiang, Feng Zhao

3D object detection from multiple image views is a fundamental and challenging task for visual scene understanding. Owing to its low cost and high efficiency, multi-view 3D object detection has demonstrated promising application prospects. However, accurately detecting objects through perspective views is extremely difficult due to the lack of depth information. Current approaches tend to adopt heavy backbones for image encoders, making them inapplicable for real-world deployment. Different from the images, LiDAR points are superior in providing spatial cues, resulting in highly precise localization. In this paper, we explore the incorporation of LiDAR-based detectors for multi-view 3D object detection. Instead of directly training a depth prediction network, we unify the image and LiDAR features in the Bird-Eye-View (BEV) space and adaptively transfer knowledge across non-homogenous representations in a teacher-student paradigm. To this end, we propose \textbf{BEVDistill}, a cross-modal BEV knowledge distillation (KD) framework for multi-view 3D object detection. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms current KD approaches on a highly-competitive baseline, BEVFormer, without introducing any extra cost in the inference phase. Notably, our best model achieves 59.4 NDS on the nuScenes test leaderboard, achieving new state-of-the-art in comparison with various image-based detectors. Code will be available at https://github.com/zehuichen123/BEVDistill.

PaperPDFCode

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

Code

zehuichen123/bevdistill officialmentioned in papermentioned on GitHubpytorch 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

Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.

Tasks

3D Object DetectionDepth EstimationDepth PredictionKnowledge DistillationObjectObject DetectionScene Understanding

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

TaskDatasetModelMetricValueRank at snapshotLeaderboardReport
3D Object Detection nuScenes Camera Only BEVDistill Future Frame false #15 of 19 Archive leaderboard report
3D Object Detection nuScenes Camera Only BEVDistill NDS 59.4 #15 of 19 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.

Methods

Knowledge DistillationTest

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